on the edge (of the devil's backbone)
by entersomethingcleverhere
Summary: FBI Agent Felicity Smoak is going undercover. Her cover: to work as Bratva Captain Oliver Queen's executive assistant at Queen Consolidated. Her mission: to get close to Queen and infiltrate the Bratva and help the FBI bring it down from the inside. But what happens when she starts to fall for the complicated Bratva captain?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: So. I wrote a thing.**

 **This has actually been in the works for a while, and I'm really excited to start sharing this with y'all. Also, much thanks to ellefraser17 because she has been my second eyes on this thing and holder of my self esteem while I pound my head repeatedly against my desk.**

 **I hope you enjoy!**

* * *

 **Prologue**

Felicity Smoak had put up with a lot from Director Waller during her tenure at the FBI, but this was the last goddamn straw.

She barged right into Waller's office, a piece of paper clutched in her shaking hand. She'd scarcely been more angry than she was at the moment — she was so furious, she was certain she'd make the whole building explode with a single scream.

"Where is she?" Felicity demanded. The assistant behind his desk stiffened at her tone.

"Miss Smoak, she's in a conference call right now, and I don't think—"

She didn't wait for him to finish his sentence. Instead she brushed past his desk and flung the door to Waller's office open as hard as she could. The director looked up from her desk, her eyebrows raised in that cold, calculating way that normally would have made Felicity run for the hills. Instead it fanned the flames of her ire.

"Have you lost your mind?" Felicity demanded as she waved around the piece of paper. "Has your android programming completely taken over your brain? Because honestly that's the only reason I could _possibly_ think of for you to assign me to a deep cover mission to investigate the Bratva!"

Waller's eyes narrowed, but they never left Felicity's. The coldness in the other woman's eyes could do nothing to chill the anger raging through the blonde's tiny body. Nothing short of dousing her with a fire extinguisher could distract her from this.

"Agent Michaels, I will have to call you back," Waller announced. Then she reached over and hung up the phone.

The director crossed around her massive mahogany desk, walking closer to Felicity, but she stood her ground. She was not going to back down. She was not going to run away from this. Waller had finally gone too far and it was time she gave her a piece of her mind.

"I'm not doing this," Felicity declared.

"Yes you are."

"No I'm not! Here, I'll give you a list of reasons, since you seem to have lost control of whatever rational thinking you have left. First of all, I just work in op tech. I'm not even field rated! Second of all, even if I _wanted_ to be an agent, I sure as shit wouldn't go deep undercover for my first fucking mission. Third of all, this mission is suicide!"

"Miss Smoak, need I remind you why you're here working for the federal government in the first place?"

Felicity's back stiffened at the tacit reminder. Of course Waller was going to deal from the bottom of the deck to get what she wanted in this sick, twisted scheme. But no matter how much red she had in her ledger, Felicity Smoak had to draw the line somewhere.

"Throw me in prison if you want," she growled, "but I'm not doing this."

Waller stared at Felicity for a long moment. Then she reached into one of her desk drawers and pulled out a piece of paper from the top. "Miss Smoak," she began in a deadly whisper. "I'd strongly reconsider your stance before you make your final decision."

Felicity wanted to take the piece of paper, crumple it up and throw it in Waller's face. Instead, she angrily snatched it and started reading. With each word that registered in her brain, the flames of Felicity's rage quelled bit by bit until she reached the end and she was filled instead with a fearful sort of hope.

She bit down on her fuschia lips. This could be it, she thought desperately to herself. She could finally start over. She could be free.

Waller smirked at the dumbstruck look on Felicity's face. "Like I said. Take your time to think about it."

* * *

 **Phase One**

Oliver glanced up over the piece of paper in his hand at the blonde woman sitting across from him. When she recognized that he was looking at her, her lips pulled open in what looked like a mildly painful smile. He couldn't help but grin at her obvious discomfort.

"How are you doing, Ms. Smoak? Can I get you anything? A glass of water or coffee, perhaps?"

She shook her head. "No, I'm OK. I drank, like, three bottles of water before I got here so if you pump any more liquid in me I'll probably end up peeing in your chair and that would not make a good first impression when interviewing for a job."

He watched with growing amusement as the young woman winced at her own words. "And that probably wasn't a very good first impression either," she muttered to herself, her eyes closed and her cheeks bright red.

His smile widened. "Why don't you start by telling me a little bit about yourself."

"Um...well, I grew up in Las Vegas. Then I moved to Starling City, and I got my associate's at Starling City Community College. I studied business and accounting."

"Why did you move to Starling?"

She fidgeted some more, looking down at her hands. "Different reasons," she hedged.

He raised an eyebrow and made an idle note in the margin of her resume to look that up later.

"Why do you think you'd make a good executive assistant?"

She took in a deep breath through her nose before she answered. "Well I'm really smart. I'm an incredibly fast learner and I have a photographic memory, so I remember the smallest details. I'm also good at anticipating needs and I'm really organized."

Oliver's eyes widened a little at that information.

"Really? A photographic memory?"

She let out the tiniest sigh, like she had gotten this question a million times before and she knew what was coming next. "Yes. Would you like me to prove it?"

Oliver smirked. He had a copy of this morning's paper underneath her resume.

"Did you see the Starling City Ledger this morning?"

She nodded.

"What was the lead headline?"

"'Police: city crime at all time high,'" she answered. Then she started reciting the story as Oliver read along. Sure enough, she got the entire thing word for word until she got to the jump line.

When she was finished, he leaned back in his chair and stared at her with appraising eyes. "How do I know you didn't just memorize that story before you came here in case I asked?"

She rolled her eyes. "Why don't I ask you a better question, Mr. Queen. If I didn't have a photographic memory, do you really think I'd have the time to sit down this morning and memorize a news story word for word on the off chance that you might quiz me on it during a job interview? I'm barely coherent in the morning without at least one cup of coffee to make me functional."

His lips twisted in appraisal, but it was more of a cover to hide the creeping smile. "What was the name of the security guard on the bottom floor of the building who let you in?"

"Elias Fisher. Brown hair, brown eyes, acne problem. He was reading a biology textbook, which makes me think he's probably a college student, maybe nineteen years old. That reminds me, you really should hire more experienced security guards. His hands were too soft to even fire a gun."

He couldn't help but feel the tiniest bit impressed. She'd probably only interacted with Elias for a minute at the most, and she managed to glean that much information in that short amount of time.

That skill could come in really handy.

But that was assuming she passed the thorough security check he had set up.

"Well as you know, the relationship between an executive and his assistant isn't just about getting me my coffee and sending out my faxes. It's also about chemistry, which means we'll have to test you out for a week to see if we match."

Her painted lips thinned and her eyes hardened. It was a look of pure determination. Oliver had always been drawn to determined women.

"For this next week, you will report to this office at 7:30 a.m. every day," he continued. "You will go the week as a test run where you will get paid at half salary. If, at the end of the week, I think you will make a good fit, I will hire you on for full time."

She nodded. "Very well."

He returned her nod and stood up with an outstretched arm. "Welcome to Queen Consolidated, Miss Smoak. And good luck."

She took his hand and shook it firmly before giving him one last, strained smile then turning on her sensible black heels and walking out of his office.

Once she was gone, he sat back down and hit the first number on his speed dial. The person on the other line answered after one ring.

"Roy, I need you to run a background check on Felicity M. Smoak. S-M-O-A-K. Dig up everything you can."

"You looking for anything in particular?" the teen asked.

"She interviewed for the executive assistant job."

That answer spoke volumes. "Got it. I'll have a report for you by the afternoon."

The minute he hung up, Oliver let out a deep sigh and turned his chair to stare out the massive window behind his desk. It offered him a beautiful, unimpeded view of downtown Starling City, like a king surveying his kingdom.

In many ways, the city did belong to him. Not only was he the CEO of Queen Consolidated, the largest employer in the city and a multi-billion-dollar company, he was a captain of the Bratva, whose territory included all of Starling City and its outlying suburbs. He owned practically everything in the city, from buildings to politicians.

And he hated it.

Every moment of every day was meticulously scheduled between his duties at QC and with the Bratva. The minute he left his office, he was whisked away into secret meetings tracking all organized, illegal activity in the city and regulating it like some sort of underworld police.

It was an exhausting, lonely existence and one he wished desperately to escape. But there were so many people whose livelihoods depended on him. There were families who literally lived and died by a sweep of his hand. It was a responsibility he spent his entire young life running away from, but now it had caught up with him. There was no escape.

His work day at Queen Consolidated eventually came to an end, and with a reluctant sigh, left his office. When he got to street level, his bodyguard and driver John Diggle was waiting for him with his car and an opened door.

"How was work today, Mr. Queen?" Digg asked.

The man in question grimaced as he slid into the car. "Just take the gun out of your holster and shoot me now so I never have to hear another half-assed proposal from the foreign investments division ever again."

Digg chuckled and closed the door after him.

Fifteen minutes later, the car was pulling into the front drive of the gigantic Queen mansion. The guards standing outside the house walked forward to open the car door and Oliver stepped out.

Once they were on the Queen's property, Diggle dropped the genial driver act as he fell into step beside Oliver. "Anatoly scheduled a conference call with you and The Count tonight to talk about Vertigo. He wants us to consider the proposal."

Oliver sighed as he walked through the front door that Digg held open for him. "Why is Anatoly so intrigued by this?" he grumbled. "I thought we had agreed that we were not going to expand into new drugs. _Especially_ synthetics."

"He sees it as a money-making opportunity," the other man shrugged. "None of the other crime families have seized it yet. He thinks if we claim the monopoly on Vertigo early, we'll be in control of the entire Pacific Northwest."

Oliver finally reached his office and threw open the door in anger. "Yes, but at what cost?" he demanded. "I've seen the reports on that stuff! It's ten times more addictive than heroin and five times more deadly than crystal meth! If we start dealing in Vertigo, we will be responsible for tearing families apart, orphaning children, ruining people's _lives_!"

Digg raised an eyebrow at his friend. "Oliver, I hate to break it to you, but we already do that on a regular basis. That's what happens when you're a high-ranking member of an international crime syndicate."

Oliver scowled and turned away from him. Digg was right, of course. Every day, he and his men carried out orders from the main cell in Moscow, to strengthen the Bratva's influence in the United States and wipe out all the competition from other crime families. He'd lost count of just how many lives he'd been responsible for ruining along the way.

It weighed heavily upon him every day.

Later that night, at the scheduled time, Oliver and Digg sat down in his locked office, hunched around the office phone. They listened as The Count (as he so unironically named himself) pitched them the benefits of being the sole dealers of Vertigo. How the addictive properties created an automatic brand loyalty, how there was no other drug on the market even comparable to its effects. How being the ones to push Vertigo presented a very rare and unique opportunity to make them rich and influential beyond their wildest dreams.

Anatoly interrupted the pitch every few seconds to ask questions or to make a comment, but Oliver and Digg remained silent. When The Count was finished with his pitch, Oliver cleared his throat and said, "Thank you. We will consider this proposal and get back to you soon."

"No, thank _you_ gentlemen," The Count replied in his oily voice. "I look forward to being in business with you."

A click sounded to indicate he had removed himself from the conference call. The minute he did, Oliver launched into his grievances.

"Anatoly, we can't do this," he insisted. "This drug is dangerous."

"So is heroin. So is cocaine. Yet those drugs account for much of our profits." Anatoly's gravelly voice took on an amused tone, like he was humoring his nephew or his favorite pupil. Oliver's fist clenched in his lap as he tried again.

"This drug could be a scourge," he insisted. "It's highly addictive, yes, but it's highly fatal. I've read the reports on this shit. Prolonged use leads to gruesome death, and that's if you're lucky. If you're not lucky, you just go insane."

"Ah, Oliver, always the bleeding heart," Anatoly said fondly.

"I'm serious!" he protested. "And this isn't just about the moral implications — it's about the business implications, too. What kind of successful business could we possibly run with this drug if it kills off all its customers? Don't we want them to stay alive to keep buying? The reports say that the average number of uses before death or insanity is twenty. That's _barely_ even a month for a heavy user."

That logic seemed to have gotten through to the Bratva leader. As Anatoly hummed in thought over the speakerphone, Oliver sat at the edge of his seat, begging and praying with all his might that Anatoly would eventually give in.

"You have a very good point," he finally conceded. "However, I also think this is still too good an opportunity to pass up. We will continue negotiations with The Count — see if he cannot tinker with the formula of the drug to ensure longer lives for the users. If it is possibility, then we go through with it."

Oliver brought his fist down on his desk with a loud bang.

"This is a mistake!" he yelled.

" _Nyet_!" Anatoly shouted. All traces of joviality were gone from his voice. "Stop it. Stop it now, Oliver. You are not thinking far enough ahead. If we seize this opportunity with Vertigo, we can finally take control of all of Pacific Northwest. We can finally drive Triad out of our territory, once and for all."

Oliver glanced up at Digg. His counselor had been noticeably quiet the entire conversation, but the minute Anatoly mentioned the Triad, Digg shifted in his seat.

Once it was clear to Anatoly that he wouldn't be interrupted with any more protests, he continued. "That is endgame, Oliver. Wiping out Triad is always our priority, and we will do it however we can. Vertigo kills, yes, but not as much as Triad. You and John, of all people, should know."

A click, then the long dial tone told them both that Anatoly had hung up.

With a sigh, Oliver reached forward and turned off the speaker. Then he leaned back into his plush leather office chair and scrubbed a hand over his tired face.

"So," Digg began quietly. "What are we going to do?"

Oliver pinched the bridge his nose, right between his eyes. "We're going to wait. That's all we can do."

A knock on the door interrupted the somber atmosphere. "Come in," he called, hiding the Vertigo reports on his desk underneath a stack of other papers.

The door opened to reveal Roy in his token red hoodie and jeans. "Hey, boss," he greeted. "I got that background report you wanted for that chick who applied for the assistant job."

That news forced Oliver to sit up straight in his seat. "Well," he said, holding out his hand. "Let's have it."

Roy stepped forward and passed the paper to his boss. "It came out pretty clean," he summarized. "She grew up in Vegas, graduated high school at the top of her class. Then she moved here to Starling and went to SCCC where she earned top marks there as well."

"Well that's good news," Digg commented.

Oliver nodded absently as he scanned through the report. Sure, it was good news, but it was also kind of...disappointing. A woman who'd never gotten in trouble in her life? Who spent her youth studying? For what, to be a secretary to a CEO/mob boss?

In truth, he'd been looking for something a little different. He'd been hoping that Felicity had some sort of checkered past. The ideal assistant candidate would be able to keep up with him at QC, but would also be able to seamlessly transition between the straight and narrow into the more murky aspects of his life. Like Digg.

A spotless record meant she was good for the EA job, but it usually meant she wouldn't be able to fit in with the mobsters.

"But there was one thing," Roy interjected. "There was a small blip on her record. After she graduated high school, she disappeared for two years. From 2010 to 2012, we couldn't find any record of her existence. She went off the grid. No lease information to show a place of residence, no credit information. Not even a freaking library card. It was like she disappeared into a black hole, then all of a sudden she was living in Starling City, like nothing had ever happened."

Oliver's eyebrows shot up his forehead. He caught Digg's eyes and he could see his counselor was equally intrigued.

"Have you heard anything on the streets?" Digg asked.

"Very little. Most of it matched up to the whole goody two-shoes bit, but there was one guy who said he knew her at SCCC. Said she was super quiet, kinda scary. Back then apparently she'd dyed her hair black and had that whole goth thing going."

Well, Oliver could hardly fault her for her fashion choices. He himself had gone through a period in high school when he popped the collar on his pastel-colored polo every day. He shuddered just thinking about it.

"What do you think?" Oliver asked Digg.

He shrugged. "Couldn't hurt to give her a try."

* * *

 **A/N: The (tentative) plan is to update this every Friday.**

 **Find me on Tumblr at entersomethingcleverhere. Come say hi!**


	2. Chapter 2

Oliver strolled into his office right at 8 a.m., like he did every day. And lo and behold, Felicity Smoak was waiting for him at her desk right in front of his office. Like a tiny blonde bodyguard, ready to block anyone who tried to get in without an appointment.

The image of Felicity in an oversized black suit and sunglasses and an earpiece made him smile.

The young woman looked up at Oliver's entrance and she gave him a bland smile. "Good morning, Mr. Queen."

"Good morning, Ms. Smoak," he answered.

As he was passing her desk, she got up and followed him, a to-go cup of coffee in one hand and a bright pink portfolio in the other. The color threw him off for a second when he remembered what Roy told him about her goth past. She seemed to have gone the complete opposite direction since then, because her hair was like a sparkling, sun-shiney kind of blonde and her dress was the same shade of fuschia as her lips, with a heart-shaped cutout right above her breasts.

Don't, Oliver chastised himself sternly when his eyes wandered down to the flawless, cream-colored skin peeking through the cutout. Don't even go there.

Once Oliver had settled into his desk chair, Felicity placed the coffee in front of him. "While you were gone you missed three messages. One from Lucius Fox at Wayne Enterprises, wanting to work out a deal on some proprietary technology that QC holds the patents to…one from your mother asking you what you were planning on wearing to the Starling General benefit this Friday evening…and one from your sister confirming lunch plans this weekend." She unstuck the post-it notes from the front of her portfolio, then lightly pressed them on the top of his desk calendar.

Then she flipped open her portfolio and pulled out a stack of papers. "These are some memos HR wanted you to initial by this afternoon. You have a lunch with Randall McCuen from the financial division at noon today. I booked your regular table at Portofino's, and you have the quarterly meeting with all the department heads at 2 p.m. Though if you ask me, having a meeting after lunch is always a terrible idea because everyone's always tired and drowsy and all blah. If you want I can have it rescheduled for 10 a.m. instead."

To say that Oliver was surprised would have been an understatement. It was Felicity's first day of her probationary period — her _first day_ — and here she was, acting like she'd been at the gig for twenty years. And what was more, she got all the details _right_. Down to how he took his coffee.

Who _was_ this woman?

"Mr. Queen?" she prodded, no doubt a little confused by his dumbstruck face.

"How do you know all of this stuff already?" he demanded.

She shrugged. "I couldn't sleep because I was too nervous about starting today, so I spent all night reading the HR employee handbook and every interview you've ever done with any business publication. Then I got here at 7 a.m. to look through all your messages and the appointments from the past five years."

"From the past _five years_?" he sputtered.

"I had a lot of coffee."

Oliver stared at her in awe for a few more seconds. Then he shook his head in both bewilderment and resignation. If she was going to jump into this with both feet then so was he. Hopefully she could keep up.

"Well, OK then. We'll return the messages first. Call Lucius for me and patch him through when he answers. Then call my mom and tell her I'm wearing the Armani suit she had me fitted for last month unless she has a different one in mind. After that, send Thea a text telling her I'll meet her at Big Belly Burger at 1 p.m. Saturday."

Felicity nodded along with him as she jotted down the notes.

"After that, go ahead and push the quarterly meeting up to 10 a.m. because you're right. Everyone will be useless after lunch."

"Do you want me to push the lunch with Randall to noon-thirty in case it goes long? The minutes from the corporate calendar show that the quarterly meetings run late about half of the time."

Oliver raised an eyebrow at her. "Noon-thirty? Who the hell says noon-thirty?"

She shrugged defensively. "It's less confusing than saying 12:30 and it's fewer syllables than 12:30 p.m."

He rolled his eyes, but he felt the smallest of smiles creeping its way onto his face. She may have been odd, but there was something just so charming about her oddness.

"Very well. Push my lunch to...noon-thirty. And if 12:15 passes and I'm still in the meeting, come get me out of it. Or do you call it noon-fifteen?"

Felicity ignored the bait. She just jotted down the note and nodded. "Okiedokie, Mr. Queen. Let me know if you need anything." And with that, she turned on her heel and walked out of his office, and damn if Oliver couldn't stop himself from watching the way her ass moved in that dress as she left.

The rest of Oliver's morning went by smoothly. He worked out an agreement with Lucius to let Wayne Enterprises use the spare centrifuge QC had in applied sciences in exchange for sharing any information that would result from its use. He also made it through all the HR memos he had, and Felicity did indeed end up pulling him out of the department meeting to make lunch with Randall.

By the time he returned to the office from Portofino's, it was 2 p.m. and he could feel himself starting to drag. But sure enough, the moment he sat down at his desk, Felicity walked in just seconds later to set down yet another to-go cup of coffee in front of him.

"Good afternoon," she greeted him professionally. "While you were gone, I took the liberty of picking up the suit your mother actually wants you to wear to the benefit this weekend from the dry cleaners. She wanted me to tell you that the Armani is too sleek, and apparently you'll steal all the attention away from the sick kids."

Oliver snorted.

"Fair enough. Was there anything else?"

He looked up to see Felicity's demeanor had changed a little. She bit down on her bottom lip and started fidgeting with her hands.

She wanted something.

"Ms. Smoak?" he prodded. "What's on your mind?"

There was a visible pause he could read on her face. She bit down harder on her lip for a second as her eyes showed her inner battle. If Oliver was being entirely truthful, he found it ridiculously charming.

But if he was going to think about bringing Felicity into his other, non-QC life, he'd have to work with her on her poker face.

Finally, something in her won out. She made a jerky motion with her hand and blurted, "I know I haven't even been here a whole day and I don't have any right or even like the leverage to ask you to do anything yet but the thing is I overheard Marty who's one of the clerks downstairs talking about his sick wife in the breakroom and how she has stage four cancer and she has to undergo a lot of pretty heavy chemo and it's been really stressing him out and while I was out getting your suit I also stopped by the card store and picked this out and I thought it would be a really nice gesture of goodwill and concern for you to sign it and leave it on his desk."

She said all of this in one long, run-on sentence and she said it so fast that Oliver couldn't fully understand exactly what she was saying. But then she pulled a pale green card out of her portfolio and put it on his desk. It had a single daisy on the front and the words "Get better soon!" in flowy calligraphy.

To say that Oliver was surprised would have been an understatement. _That's_ what she was so nervous about?

"Just to be clear," he said slowly, "you were nervous to ask me to sign a get well card for Marty's wife?"

"Like I said, I know I haven't been working here long enough," she said a little more slowly. She bit her lip and glanced down, fidgeting in her spot. "But I just think it would engender some morale and show that you care."

Well that caught his attention. "Do you think I don't care?"

"No!" she shouted, her face horrified. "No, that's not what I mean. I think you care. It's pretty obvious that you care because Julio told me the story about how that one time he mentioned that he liked your watch when he was cleaning up your office, and you just took it off and gave it to him to keep. I mean, that's _clearly_ not the kind of guy who's ungenerous."

Oliver didn't understand what she was trying to say anymore. The only thing he could focus on was the fact that she thought he was generous. It filled him with this kind of warmth that he didn't want to go away.

She took another deep breath and began again, a little more slowly this time. "All I'm trying to say is, I think you should sign that card because Marty's going through a tough time right now and it would be nice for him to know that his boss has his back."

He stared at his executive assistant for a long time. She'd only known him for sixteen hours, and here she was, acting like he had the ability to hang the moon for his employees. And in a way, he did. He could.

Hearing her faith in him, though, made him want to live up to whatever idea she had built up in her head. No matter what.

Without another word, Oliver pulled a pen out of his pocket and signed the card with a flourish.

When he was finished, he pulled out a stack of post-its on his desk and started jotting down a number. "After you give the card to Marty, call Starling General. Tell them to redirect all hospital bills to this personal P.O. box."

Felicity's eyes widened as she lifted her arm to take the post-it from him. He struggled to hide a smirk at her dumbstruck expression.

"Oh, and Felicity? This P.O. box is a secret. I trust you know how to keep one."

She was still shocked, so all the poor girl could manage was a nod. But underneath her surprise, he could see the tiniest glint of something in her eyes.

He wanted to keep that glint just for himself.

* * *

Oliver dreaded the fifth of every month, because that was when he had his meetings with his _boevik_.

In truth, he only liked liked two of them. Roy was his favorite, though you'd have to twist his arm to get him to say it. He may have just been a teenager, but he was a scrappy one, always eager to prove himself.

Roy was also the one to kick up the most fuss over actions he thought were beneath them. Actions like selling drugs to children. Like when someone used the Bratva's political connections to release a prisoner known for domestic abuse.

Then there was Sin. Sin may have been the youngest of the _boevik_ and the only woman on it, but she was arguably the toughest of all of them. She grew up on the streets, which meant she knew every low life scumbag out there and knew who to work and how to get stuff done.

The others were either sycophantic kiss asses or moral-less heathens that he unfortunately inherited from his father. Oliver would have loved nothing more than to get rid of them, but they were already far too connected to the city's underground. It was safer to keep them close and on a leash than it was to release them.

"What's on the agenda for tonight?" Oliver asked as he sauntered over to the drink cart in his office and poured a snifter of vodka.

Digg glanced down at his phone. "Fyers has a status report on our truce with the Bertinellis and the arms trade deal we negotiated with them last month."

"Remind me what the terms of that deal was again?"

"They distribute the arms, we get forty percent of the cut."

"Ahh, right. I seem to remember Fyers proudly calling himself a cheeky bastard for squeezing forty percent out of them."

Diggle snorted before continuing. "Then Gold's giving us the a report on the gambling rackets we have set up. He's probably going to tell us that the the Yakuza are trying to horn in our territory."

"Is he going to have a proposal for how we take care of it?"

"I hope so."

Oliver rolled his eyes. By that, Digg meant he probably wouldn't. God, Gold was useless most days.

"All right. Anything else?"

"Not for tonight. But I should tell you that Blood reached out to me earlier today because he wants to talk about elections."

Oliver groaned. "Jesus Christ. The primaries aren't for nine months."

"I told him that, but you know how Blood is," Digg shrugged.

Oliver knocked back the vodka in his glass, then poured another. If having to deal with his _boevik_ wasn't enough…

The meeting itself went much like they always did. After everyone exchanged the obligatory pleasantries, they settled into the couches to get down to business. The meeting dragged on for an excruciating two hours, where Fyers patted himself on the back again for his deal with the Bertinelli clan, and Gold did not, in fact, have a plan for dealing with the Yakuza horning in on their gambling racket.

Right when the meeting was about to come to a close, Ivo piped up.

"Have we heard back from Moscow about Vertigo?"

Oliver's hand clenched around his tumbler. "Anatoly and I are still considering the proposal."

Ivo rolled his eyes. "What is there to consider, Oliver? It's a highly addictive drug that can make us all rich. Why aren't we going for it?"

"Probably because he knows that synthetic drugs could make this city more dangerous than it already is," Sin growled. Oliver may have disliked Ivo a lot, but Sin's hatred seemed much more personal.

Ivo rolled his eyes. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but we are the _Bratva_. Since when did we care about whether the city's dangerous? We walk these streets without any consequences."

Sin's body seized, like she was getting ready to launch herself at him, but Digg reached over and squeezed her arm. Oliver cleared his throat to address Ivo before Sin beat him up.

"In any business venture, there are consequences we have to consider, least of which is the toxicity of the drug. Like I said, Anatoly and I are still considering the proposal, and if you have a problem with that you can either keep your mouth shut or I can shut it for you."

Ivo scowled at him, but he took Oliver's advice and stayed quiet.

Digg poured everyone one last shot of vodka, and everyone raised their glasses. " _Prochnost_ ," they all murmured before knocking it back.

Just as everyone stood to leave a knock came at the door and one of the footmen outside walked in.

"Mr. Queen, a Felicity Smoak is here to see you."

He immediately stiffened at the name. He glanced over at Digg whose face was strangely blank.

"Thank you," he said. "Have her wait in the den."

When the footman left, he turned to his _boevik_. "Leave now. Make sure she doesn't see you."

Ivo smirked. "Well would you look at that. It seems our fearless captain has himself a girlfriend."

Oliver scowled. "Just get out."

Once everyone had left, Oliver rubbed a hand over his tired face. "What in the world is she doing here?" he murmured.

"I don't know, but you better go find out," Digg answered.

With a sigh, Oliver heaved himself up from his seat and went to the den. This wasn't good, he thought to himself. He had set up walls, very strict walls that kept all QC business at QC and all Bratva business here. Having her here, on the night of a _boevik_ meeting of all times, was dangerous.

He rounded the corner of the living room and saw Felicity standing in front of the portrait of his father. It was well past 11 p.m., but she was still dressed in the same clothes she'd been wearing at the office earlier.

"Ms. Smoak," he called out to her. She jumped at the sound of his voice and pulled away from the portrait, wearing a guilty look on his face.

"What are you doing here?" he asked with a frown.

"You're mad," she sighed. "I knew you'd be mad. I've only been working for you for two days, but like the first thing I learned from everyone at QC was never, _ever_ go to the Queen mansion without an invitation. I'm really, really, _really_ sorry."

Well that was a bit of a surprise to him. It was true he never invited people from the office to the mansion unless it was for the annual Christmas party or something. He didn't realize, however, that it seemed to be like some unspoken rule at the office.

Her guilty expression made his own soften. With a tired sigh, he asked, "What can I do for you, Ms. Smoak?"

She still looked nervous, but very quietly she stepped forward and pulled out a stack of papers from her bag that were bound together with a binder clip. "The COO wants you to take a look through these proposals by tomorrow's executive meeting."

He took the stack from her, and the minute she did, she started rambling. "Again, I'm really, _really_ sorry. I should have put it in your briefcase before you left. In fact, I was going to, but then you left while I was in the bathroom and I thought I'd just let it go until tomorrow, but then freaking Sheryl goes and drops it on me that you have a meeting about them tomorrow at 9 a.m. I'm _really_ sorry."

"I hadn't noticed."

His attempt at a joke brought a weak smile to Felicity's face.

"Thanks for bringing these over," he said gently. "I'll take a look through these tonight."

She nodded. "OK. Well my duty is done, so I'll go ahead and see myself out."

"I'll walk you." Oliver turned around to see Digg had been standing in the doorway the entire time.

"Thank you, Mr. Diggle." Felicity said with a smile.

He smiled. "Now, Felicity, how many times do I have to tell you to call me John or Digg?"

"Sorry...John."

Digg chuckled and Felicity gave a sheepish smile as he followed her out of the living room and into the foyer.

For Oliver, seeing his closest counselor become such quick friends with his new assistant was surprising, considering how much John hated the previous assistant. There were times when Oliver was seriously worried John would pull out his Bratva weapon and empty his clip into the poor guy.

With both of them gone, Oliver took the papers into his office leaving the door slightly ajar behind him. Then he sighed and collapsed into his desk chair, before ripping the clip off the stack and tossing it aside on his desk.

No rest for the wicked, he thought to himself darkly before diving in.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day Oliver arrived to a monstrous cup of coffee sitting on his desk. Once he looked up, he saw Felicity with that same contrite expression on her face.

He couldn't help but smile a little at the scene. "Wow," he said in amusement. "Can I ask why my coffee cup is taller than the Eiffel Tower?"

"I'm really sorry about last night," she blurted. "For a lot of reasons: because I crashed your house without an invitation and also because I didn't get those documents to you until late and _since_ I didn't get those documents to you late, you probably didn't get much sleep."

"Hence the coffee," he surmised.

"Look, I don't know if I made this clear, but I really, really want this job. And I think aside from my mishap last night, I've proven myself as a really good assistant, so firing me in the middle of my probationary period wouldn't be the best move for you because I bring you coffee and also I have a photographic memory."

"Felicity," he interrupted her before she worked herself into an anxiety attack. "Felicity, I'm not going to fire you."

That seemed to stop her in her tracks because her mouth closed very abruptly. Then, after she blinked her huge blue eyes a couple of times, she finally blurted, "That's the first time you called me by my first name."

Oliver's eyebrow quirked. "Is that a bad thing?"

She shook her head. "No. No, not at all. I just...I just didn't know we were on a first-name basis."

"Well, I'm not going to fire you for calling me Oliver either."

Her cheeks turned the prettiest shade of pink and he couldn't help but smile at the sight.

"So thank you for the coffee, Felicity."

"You're welcome. Oliver."

* * *

"Oliver?"

He looked up from the papers on his desk to see his assistant standing in the doorway, holding a garment bag by the hanger out at arm's length, like it was a snake getting ready to attack. "What is this?" she asked with the most adorably perplexed expression he'd ever seen.

"That would be a garment bag with a dress in it," he answered a little playfully. "You're going to wear that dress tonight for the hospital benefit."

Her jaw dropped. "You never told me I had to go."

"Oh. Did I forget to mention that?"

His mock innocent look didn't seem to fool her, because her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "I wasn't aware that accompanying you to fundraisers was a part of the job description."

He chuckled. "Felicity, I need you there because there will be people who I'm expected to know and remember and quite frankly, I have better things to do with my brainspace."

"And I don't?" she sputtered.

"That's not what I meant. I meant that you have a much larger brainspace than I do, especially with that photographic memory of yours. I need you by my side to remember things for me, considering I'm not very good at it."

Felicity sighed. "I had plans, you know," she grumbled as she pulled the dress closer to her to peek into the bag.

Oliver snorted. "What were those plans, catching up on the backlog on your DVR?"

She clenched her jaw. "Those still count as plans. I was going to spend my night in my sweats and fuzzy socks with no makeup and now I have to spend it in a couture gown and high heels. I don't even have any shoes to go with this dress."

"There's a box under your desk," Oliver said.

She let out a dramatic sigh before turning on her heel and marching out of his office.

Later that night, Oliver's town car pulled up to the hospital benefit. As usual, a red carpet ran from the door to the sidewalk, and flanked on either side of the carpet was a rope line, separating the commoners and the press from the attendees.

"By the way," Digg said from the driver's seat, "Blood's supposed to make an appearance at this thing."

Oliver groaned. "I'm not doing any Bratva business tonight, Digg. Not here, not during a benefit for sick children. Make sure everyone knows that."

"Just give Felicity a heads up and she can keep Blood at bay."

"Speaking of Felicity, where is she?"

"She's right there," Digg pointed.

Oliver turned his head to look where he gestured. At first he couldn't see her. All he could see was a lovely woman in a figure-hugging, Jessica Rabbit red dress. But then the woman turned and that was when he realized it was Felicity.

Without another word, he climbed out of the car and walked up to her. She stood with her shoulders hunched and her face a little hidden, looking scared of all the flashes going off around her.

"Felicity," he called. He gently pressed a hand against her bare shoulder, and she jumped a little at the touch.

"Oh, Oliver," she gasped. "Sorry, I didn't see you there."

"Felicity, you look lovely."

She bit down on her bright red, bottom lip. "Are you sure?" she said as she glanced down at her dress. "I was worried it'd be too much, but the dress you picked out was kinda flashy and I thought the hair and makeup should match. But _then_ I remembered what your mom said about you overshadowing the sick kids, but then I also remembered that you're Oliver Queen and you could go anywhere dressed in a burlap sack and you'd overshadow sick kids anyway whereas I'm just a lowly executive assistant who needs like three hours and four cups of coffee to look even mildly presentable, so — "

"Felicity," he interrupted with a smile. "Felicity, believe me when I say you look lovely."

Some of the tension in her shoulders went away, and she returned his smile. "OK. Thank you."

"You're welcome," he answered.

There was a bit of silence. Then she spoke up. "So, um...this is the first one of these things I've had to do. I'm not sure what exactly it entails."

"It's simple," he answered her, gently bringing his hand to the small of her back and leading her forward. "There are going to be a lot of people who want my attention, so make sure the crowd is at a manageable level. Oh, and you'll have to remind me of anything I might forget. And if it's clear that someone knows me and I don't remember who they are, I'm going to need you to run interference."

"What, like jump in and introduce myself?"

"Yes, exactly. And before I forget, there's a man here who's going to want to speak to me, but I definitely don't want to talk to him. I need you to keep him away from me, at all costs."

"What's his name?"

"Sebastian Blood, and he looks like his name is Sebastian Blood."

Felicity snorted. "Well that's great."

Her sardonic reply brought a smile to his face. "You'll do just fine."

"Out of curiosity, why _does_ he want to talk to you?"

"The same reason anyone wants to talk to me," Oliver hedged.

"To get in your pants?"

"Wha — no!" he sputtered. "What in the world would make you think that?"

"That's why a lot of people want to talk to you," she shrugged matter-of-factly. "I'm not judging. I mean, I get it." Then her eyes widened in horror when she realized what she just said. "I mean I don't get it! I mean, that's not what I meant when I said I get it. What I meant was that there are a lot of people who want to talk to you because they find you attractive and that makes sense to me. In like a purely objective, professional way."

Oliver was torn between a whole mix of feelings: confusion, amusement and embarrassment being chief among them. But he let it slide because they finished climbing up the steps and they walked in through the glittering doors.

"OK, well suffice it to say, Blood doesn't want to get in my pants. He wants me to contribute to his campaign fund for mayor of Starling City."

"So he _kinda_ wants in your pants."

"Felicity," he said warningly.

"OK, OK. Keep him away, got it."

Oliver thought that was the end of the conversation, but of course she had another question.

"Do you not _want_ him to be mayor of Starling City?" she inquired with a little head tilt.

"I'm not saying that," he bit out through a brittle smile. "I'm just saying that I don't want to talk about business like that during a benefit for sick children."

"Right," Felicity nodded. "Well then I will make sure you don't have to."

"Thank you."

The mingling and hors d'oeuvres part of the night started off kind of rough. They went through two awkward introductions, one with the fire chief and another with one of Oliver's distant, distant cousins, the latter of whom had taken the fact that Oliver didn't remember him kind of personally. But after that, they worked out a system; Felicity hovered by his elbow the entire time, then she'd interrupt the conversation by introducing herself whenever he made a small cough. Then she'd make up some sort of excuse whenever she sensed the conversation was veering toward business topics that Oliver wanted to avoid, and steer him away, much to his relief.

"You're pretty good at this," Oliver mentioned in passing surprise, after she had once again interrupted a conversation with the president of the museum board that was getting dangerously close to a solicitation for a donation.

"Well, I've had a lot of practice," she shrugged as she stuffed a meatball in her mouth. "My mom is an incredibly attractive woman, so whenever we were out doing normal stuff like grocery shopping or whatever, there would always be some creeper trying to hit on her. And since she's too nice to give direct denials, it was always up to me to do it for her."

Felicity's story came as a surprise to him.

"How old were you?" he asked.

She chewed thoughtfully. "Hmm...the first time? I think I was eight."

That came as an even bigger shock, because her childhood sounded so different from his own. He spent the entirety of his young life (and some of the adult part as well), running away from responsibilities and acting as childishly and as carefree as possible. How hard it must have been for Felicity, to take on the responsibilities of an adult at such a young age.

If he had to take on his QC and Bratva responsibilities at the age Anatoly wanted him to, he would have been much more bitter and jaded. And yet, here was Felicity, a striking beam of sunshine wherever she went.

Oliver was pondering the curiosities of his executive assistant's childhood when the woman herself nudged him in the side. "Mother, four o'clock," she muttered under her breath.

Quickly, he plastered a smile to his face and turned to greet his mother with open arms. "Mom," he said as he embraced her. "You really outdid yourself this time."

"Yes, well it's a benefit for sick children," she said with her hostess smile firmly plastered on her face. "You can never spend too much money on sick children."

Oliver hummed his agreement. "Well, Mother, I'd like to introduce you to my new executive assistant, Felicity Smoak. Felicity, this is my mother, Moira Queen."

"Nice to meet you, Mrs. Queen," Felicity said as she held out her arm for a handshake.

"Oh, yes, you're the lovely young woman I've been talking to on the phone all week because my son doesn't have time to speak to his mother while he's at work," she said as she took Felicity's hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you in person."

Felicity's eyes widened at Moira's words, while Oliver choked on his champagne.

"Mom," Oliver warned under a fake smile. "Can we not have it out here, please?"

"Fine, fine," she said with a wave of her hand. "Go on and mingle and enjoy yourself." Then she leaned in and whispered, "But just so you know, Sebastian Blood arrived ten minutes ago with a group of thugs, and I think it's going to take more than some pretty blonde at your side to slip away this time."

Oliver's jaw clenched. "I've got it handled, Mom," he murmured. Then, in a louder voice, he said, "Go on and catch up with everyone. I can be at a party without my mother holding my hand."

She let out a charming laugh. "Very well. It was so nice meeting you, Felicity. I'm sure I'll get to talk to you again soon." And with that, she turned on her graceful heel and walked away, blending effortlessly into the sparkling crowd.

Once she was gone, Felicity sighed. "Wow. I bet your mom used to be a ballet dancer, because she's a regular nutcracker."

Her pronouncement caught him off-guard, and soon he was laughing so loud that everyone in the vicinity turned to stare at him. Felicity, on the other hand, turned bright pink at the sudden attention she found herself in.

"Yes," Oliver managed to get out as his laughter died down. "She certainly didn't have problems telling leering old men to get lost."

"I imagine so."

The expression on Felicity's face was far away. A little wistful almost. Oliver wondered what was going on in her mind, if she was thinking about the difference in their childhoods, much like he had just a few moments earlier.

But then the expression cleared with a tiny shake of her head, and her bland, professional smile returned. "OK, well I have to go to the bathroom and powder my nose. I'll be back in a second."

He watched her leave, sipping on his champagne as she went. While he waited, he pounced on a few of the hors d'oeuvres trays as they passed his way. But while his attention was diverted none other than Sebastian Blood himself tapped him on the shoulder.

"Oliver Queen, what a pleasure to see you," the politician said with his disingenuous smile.

Damn it, he thought to himself as he shook his hand. His mother hadn't been exaggerating when she said Blood had brought a group of thugs with him, because he was flanked by four hulking men, two on each side. It was rather presumptuous of him, in all honesty. The primary was still nine months away, there was no guarantee that he would even be a candidate in the general election and there he was with guards the caliber of the secret service.

"Sebastian," Oliver answered with a plastic smile. "How are you doing?"

"I'm well, my friend, I'm well," he replied. "Though I have to say I am a little bummed that you haven't been answering my calls for the past few weeks."

"Oh, you know how it is. We all get busy and things come up…"

"Yes, I do know how it is," Sebastian said, that evil glint in his eye. "But now that I have you here, I was wondering — "

Right at that moment, Felicity appeared at Oliver's side with her own blandly polite smile. "Hello, I'm so sorry to interrupt. Mr. Queen, your mother wants a few pictures of you with the children. They're gathering all the benefactors right now."

Oliver felt his chest swell with relief, and he was certain it showed in his smile. "Yes, right. Thank you, Ms. Smoak. I'm sorry to cut this conversation short, Sebastian, but my mother is not to be ignored."

"Certainly," Sebastian answered, his smile looking more like a sneer. "I'm sure we'll find the time to hash this out in the next few weeks. As you know, I am very persistent."

It took all of Oliver's self control not to grimace. "Yes, I'm very aware. I'll see you later, Sebastian. Enjoy the event."

Once they were out of earshot, Felicity shivered. "God that guy is creepy. Speaking as a completely impartial third party, I would _not_ vote for him."

Oliver chuckled. "Noted."

He followed his assistant to a separate room, where he had his photo taken with the other benefactors and the children. Once it was finished, everyone was ushered back into the hall and settled into their seats for a bland dinner consisting of some sort of nondescript chicken. Then he suffered through yet another self-important speech from Carter Bowen, MD and DBE (douchebag extraordinaire, as Thea liked to call him).

When Carter was finished speaking, he stepped down and the silent auction winners were about to be announced. But just as Moira stepped up to the lectern, gunshots rang through the reception hall.

The entire room broke out into chaos as everyone ducked and hid under their tables. Oliver sprang from his seat to push Felicity down to the ground.

"Are you all right?" he yelled over the din.

Her eyes were screwed shut, but she nodded.

When there was a pause in the gun fire, he dragged her up to standing, and holding her close to him, using his body like a shield as they made a bolt for the exits.

"Quick, go find Digg and get out of here!"

"But — "

"Just go!"

And without another word, he pulled away from her and rushed up to the lectern, keeping low and taking cover every time he heard a shot.

Finally he got to the stage where Moira was curled up behind the lectern, clutching at her leg. It wasn't until he got closer that he realized she had been shot.

"Mom!" Oliver shouted. He was at her side in an instant, picking her up in his arms.

"It's OK," he grunted as he raced back toward the door. "I've got you."

She whimpered in his arms and he ran, wincing as each bounce agitated her wound. Oliver gritted his teeth, focused entirely on the door just yards away from him.

He was almost there when Moira screamed, "OLIVER, BEHIND YOU!"

It happened faster than he expected. In the split second between his mother's warning and whatever would result, he had braced himself for a blow, a shot, _something_ — but when he turned around, he instead saw a gargantuan, hulk of a man crumple to the ground as his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

Oliver stared in shock as the man hit the floor with a loud thud, but that shock was nothing compared to what he felt when he saw that behind him stood Felicity, wielding one of her shoes like a weapon. Her eyes were wide, like she couldn't quite believe what she'd done.

"Felicity!" he shouted. "I thought I told you to get out of here!"

"I couldn't just leave you here!" she yelled back. She was still gripping her shoe over her shoulder, and though her eyes were wide with fear, her lips were thin and the lines around her mouth were determined, like she wouldn't hesitate to put herself between him and danger.

Moira gripped his jacket lapel to catch his attention. "Oliver," she groaned, her face white from the pain.

The reminder that his mother was bleeding in his arms jolted Oliver back into action. With a quick jerk, he turned back around and ran for the exit, Felicity on his heels.

Digg was on the other side of the door, ushering people out. When he spotted Oliver, he rushed to his side.

"Take my mother," Oliver said, transferring Moira from his hold to Digg's massive, outstretched arms. "Get her back to the mansion, and call Dr. Snow. Tell her we need her immediately."

Moira tightened her grip on his lapel. "You have to come with us!" she demanded.

"Mom, I have to figure out what's going on! I have to make sure — "

"Oliver Jonas Queen," she bit out through gritted teeth. "I've already lost your father. I _refuse_ to let you be another casualty!"

He couldn't respond to that. The desperation in her eyes and the way she gripped his jacket had him rooted in his spot. Chaos and gunshots rang around them, but the sound that scared him the most was the fear in his mother's voice.

"OK, Mom," he said soothingly. "I'm coming with you."


	4. Chapter 4

The minute they arrived at the Queen mansion, Moira was whisked by the bodyguards down to the basement where they kept their spare operating room for emergencies like this one. Dr. Caitlin Snow, the doctor the Bratva had on retainer was already waiting with her group of trusted scrub nurses to operate on the Queen matriarch.

But in the meantime, Oliver and Digg, made a beeline to Oliver's office, with Felicity scurrying behind them.

"Oliver," she urged breathlessly, "we really need to bring your mom to the hospital."

"She'll be fine," he bit out through clenched teeth.

"But — "

They finally reached his office and he shot her a glare that made the words die on her tongue. Then he wrenched open the door and strode in. Felicity followed, then Digg, who closed the door behind them.

"Get everyone in here," Oliver demanded. "All the _boevik_. I want to know who was behind this, and I want a plan of action tonight. I want these bastards and I want their heads on a platter. In the meantime, I want every available associate we have back at the scene, cooperating with police and first responders. Set up lines of communication to let me know how many fatalities, how many wounded and if any of them were the kids."

Digg nodded, then turned on his heel and walked out the door, pulling his phone out as he went.

It left Oliver alone in the room with Felicity, who was sitting on a chair right by the fireplace. She looked a far cry different than she had when the evening began — her perfectly pinned hair had fallen to pieces, her mascara was a runny mess. And he noticed, for the first time since they arrived that she was sporting a gigantic bruise on her temple.

Without a word, he went to the mini fridge kept next to the drink cart and pulled out an ice pack. Then he went up to his assistant and kneeled down next to her chair to press the cold compress to her wound.

Felicity winced at the cold, but made no move to push him away. "Thanks," she murmured.

Oliver simply nodded his response, keeping the pack to her head and scanning the rest of her body for any other injuries. He found none, but he didn't move.

The room was laden heavy with silence. Then Felicity broke it.

"You know, I can find out the number of injuries and casualties for you." Her hands were fidgeting in her lap, like she was forcing herself to sit still even though she wanted nothing more than to go out and do something.

He shook his head. "No. Right now you need to stay. I need you here."

"Why?"

Her big blue eyes were so wide with her innocent question. Oliver's insides started rolling when he realized that he had inadvertently dragged her into this life much sooner than he'd planned.

In truth, he'd been looking for an excuse to avoid dragging her into it at all. In the short time he'd known her, she started to represent everything his life lacked; she was beauty, brightness, optimism and kindness. She was selflessness and happiness. She was the exact opposite of what this life was.

He didn't want to bring her into this. But now there wasn't a choice.

Before Oliver could answer her question, a knock at his door signalled someone else's presence. He stood up and a second later his _boevik_ filed in, their faces grim.

"Who's this?" Ivo demanded when he saw Felicity.

Oliver waved his hand. "Never mind," he growled. "What do we know?"

"No one's saying anything," Sin reported. "I reached out to all the regular suspects, but they're keeping quiet. If I had to put my money on it, this is underworld, and they're trying to send us a message."

"Then who is it trying to send us this message? And how do we send one back?"

"The Bertinellis are offering us all their resources to help us find who's responsible," Fyers piped up. "It could be just a front, but my gut's telling me it's not them."

Oliver agreed. "Ever since Frank died, their resources have dwindled. They need us more than we need them, and they wouldn't dare betray us and sabotage the truce we have set up. What about the Yakuza?"

"Unlikely," Gold shook his head. "All of the key players are in Cabo right now. Besides, those dickheads don't have the stones to do something like this."

Oliver growled, then scrubbed his hand over his face.

"It was Blood."

He whipped his head to stare at his assistant. Felicity's face lit up, redder than Arizona clay under his glare, but she looked right up at him without shrinking away.

"The guy who was about to attack you...I got a good look at his face. He was one of the guys with Blood earlier tonight," she whispered.

"How do you know?" Ivo growled. "Who the hell _are_ you?"

"She's my assistant," Oliver retorted, stepping in front of her to hide her trembling body from Ivo's glare. Then he turned back to her, his eyes a little softer.

"Are you sure?"

She nodded.

At that moment, Digg came back into the room. "I got a report from some of the guys on the scene. They're telling me the rounds they found are devastators."

All the blood in Oliver's body ran cold while everyone in the room fell silent. There was only one group that used devastator bullets, and that group was the Triad. Coupled with Felicity's surety that Blood was in on it, this suddenly became a whole new ballgame.

"Roy, Sin," Oliver barked. The two straightened when he called their names. "Find out what you can. See if Blood's gotten in bed with the Triad and report back to me immediately."

The two of them nodded and silently walked out of the room. Then Oliver turned to Gold and Fyers. "The both of you, get in touch with everyone we do business with, both above and below board. I want to know who's on our side. Remind them that if they don't stand with us, they better stay the hell out of our way."

Fyers' eyes glinted in malicious excitement and Gold's face turned up into a wicked smile. Ordinarily the expressions would have made Oliver sick to his stomach, but at the moment their ruthlessness was exactly what he needed.

When they were gone, he turned to Ivo. "You — meet with every underling we have. Every contract killer, every single associate. Tell them to prepare for war."

Ivo raised a gray eyebrow. "Are we declaring war tonight?"

"Not tonight. But it's coming and when it does, we will take them all out, starting with the assholes who opened fire on a hospital benefit."

Ivo nodded, then turned on his heel to complete his mission. Once all his _boevik_ were gone, he turned to his counselor. Digg's expression was blank, but there was a storm brewing in his eyes.

"Let Moscow know what's happened," Oliver told Digg. "When Anatoly calls, I want you in on this conversation with me."

Digg pulled out his phone and dialed the number. As it rang, he warned, "You know what he's going to say."

Oliver walked to his drink cart and poured himself a generous amount of vodka. "I know," he said tightly.

Without another word, Digg walked out of the office. Oliver and Felicity were once again alone.

"I never did thank you," he said, his eyes still on his drink.

Felicity didn't answer while he drained the glass. Then he set it down and retrieved a fresh glass, pouring this one for her. When he walked back to where she sat, stone still. The cold compress was no longer on her bruise; instead she held it in her lap as the condensation dripped on her gown. She must not have noticed that part because she was too busy staring up at him with terrified eyes.

A stab of self-loathing went through him. She was terrified of _him_. And what's more, she was right to be.

"Here," he said quietly. "Drink this."

She took the glass from him, but didn't drink it. Instead she continued to watch him, tension written in every muscle of her body.

He crossed back to the chair behind his desk and fell into it with an exhausted sigh. "You probably have a million questions right now, but first and foremost, I have to explain something."

"You're the head of the Russian mob, aren't you?"

Or maybe he didn't.

He turned a scrutinizing gaze at her. She still looked scared, and he couldn't blame her. She'd been in a room full of cold-blooded killers, hearing them talk about war and attacking with full force. Anyone would have been scared. Hell, he'd seen men twice Diggle's size vomit or faint at that kind of talk.

But she didn't. Instead she sat completely still, like a poor, defenseless mouse as a predator circled around it.

"I'm not the head," he said. "I'm a captain. I'm in charge of the Pacific Northwest branch of the Bratva."

She closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

"Right, OK," she whispered to herself. "You're the captain of the Pacific Northwest branch of the Bratva."

That was when she lifted the glass in her hand and knocked back all the vodka in it.

In spite of everything that happened that night, he couldn't help but smile a little. Here was this unbelievably gorgeous woman who looked like she couldn't harm a fly, chugging down expensive vodka in the home of a mob boss after she singlehandedly knocked out a thug three times her size.

As much as he didn't want her in this world, she seemed to be handling it remarkably well so far.

Right then, Digg walked back into the office. "Anatoly's going to call in two minutes."

Oliver sat up in his chair and pulled the phone closer as Digg took a seat on one of the chairs in front of his desk. It seemed like the longest two minutes in existence, but when the phone rang, Oliver let out a breath.

"Anatoly," he greeted as he turned on the speakerphone.

"Has it been confirmed?" the other man demanded in his gravelly English. "Is it Triad?"

"They found devastators on the scene," Oliver said.

Anatoly grunted on the other end of the line. "Is not enough. I want to make doubly sure this is not some sort of trick."

"But if we do come back with proof?" Oliver pressed.

There was silence on the other end. Then, Anatoly said, "If we find more proof then yes, we wage war."

Warmth flooded Oliver's system. He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was the work of the Triad. Once Sin and Roy came back with more proof, he could finally wipe them off the face of the planet for good.

"But Oliver," Anatoly warned. "If we start a war with Triad, you know we will have to find a way to pay for it."

Oliver bit down a sigh. "Yes."

More silence.

"Very well," Anatoly finally said. "Come back to me once you have more information." Then a click signaled the end of the conversation.

Oliver leaned back into his chair and pressed his hands against his face.

"You should know," Digg said quietly, "I got a report back from the scene. Six people were killed and a dozen more were injured. Two of the fatalities were children who were part of the benefit."

Oliver's jaw clenched. He'd been holding onto his calm all night long, clutching it to himself like a life raft. But at the news, it disappeared and all he could do now was drown in the vast sea of his rage.

He grabbed the crystal paperweight on the edge of his desk and threw it as hard as he could against the door. It shattered with a loud bang, and the sound made Felicity flinch.

"GOD _DAMN_ IT!" Oliver roared. "THESE WERE KIDS, DIGG! THEY WERE _CHILDREN_! _SICK CHILDREN_!"

He kicked hard at the bottom drawer of his desk.

Once his rage settled ever so slightly, Digg answered.

"I know. And we're not going to let them get away with this."

Oliver shook his head, his hands clenching and unclenching over and over again in his lap. He wished instead of air, his hands were closing instead over the throats of the bastards who ordered the hit tonight. He wanted to be out there, to find them and put a bullet through their brains, or to dislocate every limb on their body and watch as they writhed in pain before driving a knife through their lungs. He wanted to make them all suffer.

"I'm going to wipe every single last one of those scumbags off the face of this earth, if it's the last thing I do," he growled.

* * *

Dr. Snow told Oliver that Moira was going to be fine. She'd gotten the bullet out and it would be a little while until she was back on her feet, but all things considered, it went very smoothly.

He spent the rest of his sleepless night at her bedside, waiting for the anesthesia to subside and he'd know for himself that she was all right. It wasn't until the early morning hours, just as the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon, that Moira stirred.

Oliver's hand found hers in an instant. He squeezed it gently as she roused. Eventually her bleary eyes found his. Once she was awake, she winced slightly at the pain in her leg.

"Oliver," she moaned.

"Shhh, it's OK," he murmured. "You're OK. Dr. Snow said you're going to be just fine."

She let out a sigh and closed her eyes. "Remind me what happened."

Oliver's mouth twisted into a grimace. "Someone opened fire on the benefit," he said reluctantly. "You got shot in the leg."

She nodded quietly, like it was coming back to her slowly. "Was it the Triad?"

His hand tightened over hers. "Yes."

"How many injured and killed?"

He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Mom, I don't think this is the kind of thing to talk about while you're in a hospital bed."

"Just tell me."

He sucked in a deep breath. "Twelve injured. Six dead. Two of them were children."

This time it was her hand that tightened around his. He read the pain clear on her face and there was really nothing he could say that could make it go away. The organization to help sick children at Starling General had been her brainchild, and to see the benefit end this way with two of those poor children dead...it made Oliver sick to his stomach, so there was really no telling how his mother must have felt.

"I have to make a statement," she said as she sat up higher in her bed. "I need to make a statement to the press telling those _thugs_ that we will not take this lying down!"

"I know," Oliver said soothing. "I know, I know. We will make a statement, but not right now. You just got out of major surgery. You're not going anywhere."

She let out a sigh, a silent concession.

They remained like that for a few, silent minutes. Oliver stayed by his mother's side, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles and brushing her hair out of her face.

Then, Moira decided to break the silence.

"I remember a woman with blonde hair. Your assistant. What's her name?"

"Felicity," he answered automatically.

"She saved you, didn't she?"

He closed his eyes as he remembered the look on her face, just after she attacked that man with her shoe. He would have laughed it the situation wasn't so somber.

"Yes, she did."

"Where is she?"

"Upstairs, in one of the guest rooms. She had a long night."

Moira watched her son with knowing, calculated eyes. "You told her?"

Oliver let out a breath. "I had to. She was there last night when I met with the _boevik_."

His mother raised a perfectly shaped blonde eyebrow as she regarded her son. "Well," she said after a pause. "How did she take it?"

He shrugged. "She didn't throw up."

That made his mother laugh. "That's better than most men." Then she squeezed his hand. "You should go to her. Make sure she's OK."

Oliver looked at his mother with a confused expression. "But I have to make sure _you're_ OK."

"Darling, I'm fine."

"Mom, you just got _shot_."

"I know," she said soothingly. "But I've been in this life ever since I was born. I've known to expect this since I was old enough to walk. Felicity, on the other hand, is brand new to this. She's never seen anything like this, and you have to be with her to make sure she's all right and to make sure she won't say anything to anybody."

"She won't." Oliver was sure of that.

"I know that's what you think now, but we can never be too sure in our line of work," his mother warned. "Go to her. Talk to her. She needs you more than I do right now. And besides, you still need to thank her for saving you."

His mother was right. After he called a nurse to watch after his mother and made sure she was as comfortable as he could make her, he emerged from the basement and made his way to the guest wing where Raisa had set up Felicity's room.

He knocked gently on the door and a muffled voice on the other side called, "Come in."

When he opened the door, he found Felicity sitting on the made bed, curled up in the middle of it, her arms hugging her knees to her chest. She was wearing a tanktop and a pair of short pajama shorts he recognized as belonging to his sister, her hair a tangled mess and her eyes red and bloodshot. It looked like she hadn't slept all night.

"Hey," he said quietly.

"Hey," she answered back.

Oliver entered the room and quietly closed the door behind him. Then he sat on the chair beside the bed. "How are you doing?"

She looked away from him and shrugged. "As well as can be expected, considering I found out that my boss is also a mob boss four hours ago."

He couldn't help but smile a little. Leave it to Felicity to make it sound like it was no big deal.

"I'm sorry you had to find out that way," he said. "I...I was planning on telling you differently."

She snorted. "And how was that? You were going to sit me down to a candlelight dinner and tell me, 'Oh by the way, Felicity, I'm a captain in the Russian mafia. Hope that's cool.'"

He scratched the back of his neck in discomfort. The thought of a nice, sit-down dinner might have crossed his mind. "Well at the very least, it was supposed to involve less...gunfire."

Oliver watched as she closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to her knees. She didn't say anything for a while, and it left him shifting nervously, waiting for her to blow up, to start crying, to do _something_.

"You know what the worst thing about a photographic memory is?" she said softly, her eyes still closed. "The worst part is that I can see everything. I can see it like a movie replaying in my head, over and over again. Even when I close my eyes, I can see it and hear it. The chaos and the...the gunshots. The screams and the crying. Every time there's a different part of the scene to focus on."

His grip on the chair tightened, but he didn't say anything. He might have been in this life for much too long, but there was once a time when it was new to him too. When all the sights and smells and sounds haunted him with incredible clarity. It might have dulled over the years to distant echoes, but there were times when it came back to him in full color.

The quiet echoed between them, filled with a million things just waiting to be said. Finally, just when Oliver thought he would choke on the silence, Felicity broke it.

"So what happens now?" she asked quietly. "Do you have to kill me?"

Her resigned question caught him off guard. "What? No!" he shouted. "What the hell would make you think that?"

"Well it's what happens in all the movies," she answered. "They have to kill the witness in case the witness becomes a snitch."

Oliver got up from his chair and sat on the bed. "Felicity, look at me."

She pulled her head up and opened her eyes. They were red rimmed and bloodshot, but the startling blue still pierced through him, like the first day he met her. "You saved my _life_. You saved my _mother's_ life. I swear to God that no one is going to lay a hand on you."

He watched as tears started welling in the bottoms of her eyes. They leaked down her face, one by one and Oliver had to suppress the urge to reach up and wipe them away.

"So if you're not going to kill me, what's going to happen to me now?"

"Now you have a choice," he told her. "You can walk away. We can keep you safe in a faraway town where you will have to remain for the rest of your life. But you would be safe. No one would ever find you."

Felicity reached up and wiped the tears off her face. "What's the other option?" she asked.

Oliver took in a deep breath. "The other option is you can stay. You can stay and be a part of this. You can continue to work for me, knowing that I'm loyal to the Bratva and there will always be the possibility that you will get caught in more gunfire. That you will see more people get injured and more people die. You yourself might even die."

He held his breath as he watched her weigh her decision. He himself was torn. He knew the best thing for her would be to take the first option. To turn around, run away and never look back. He would never see her again, but she would be safe and happy.

But there was a selfish part of him that wanted her to stay. That wanted her to remain by his side so he could continue to watch her laugh and smile. She had brought so much light and laughter into his life in the brief time he'd known her and he wanted so much to hang onto it.

Finally, after a torturous silence, she looked up at him. Her eyes, which had been crying just moments ago, were still red, but they were full of the same determination he saw when he first interviewed her.

"I go where I'm needed," she said resolutely. "And you need me here. So I'm staying with you."


	5. Chapter 5

**Phase 2**

The Queen mansion gave Felicity the creeps.

She couldn't quite put her finger on it, because there wasn't anything outwardly creepy about the place. It had all the features and furniture you'd expect of a stodgy, ancestral home of one of the most influential families in the country, possibly the world. It's not like there were taxidermied human heads hanging on the walls or anything.

It was more like an energy that made Felicity want to run out the door and not look back. It felt like someone had their eyes on her all the time (and that wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility, since this was essentially Pacific Northwest Bratva headquarters). It made her already frayed nerves spasm with anxiety.

You have a job to do, she kept repeating to herself in her head over and over again as she continued to explore the mansion. One of the first assignments she was tasked with once she had fully infiltrated the Queen home was to map out the place and everyone who worked in it, from servants to bodyguards. So there she was, exploring the creepy mansion step by step, cataloging every detail in her photographic memory so she could write it down and draw it out later.

"Excuse me?"

Felicity jumped at the unexpected voice behind her and gave out a tiny yelp. When she turned around, there was an older woman in a gray maid's outfit staring at her in curiosity.

"Who are you?" the woman asked.

She swallowed. "Um...hi. I'm Felicity?" Her voice went up at the end of her introduction, like it was a question and she wasn't quite sure of her identity.

The woman's confused expression cleared up once Felicity had introduced herself. "Ah, yes. You are Mr. Oliver's assistant. I'm Raisa, the housekeeper."

Felicity swept her gaze over the woman, taking in every detail she could to recall later for the report.

"Are you lost, Ms. Felicity?"

"Oh...um, I'm afraid so," she said sheepishly. "This place feels more like a maze than a house."

Raisa chuckled. "Yes, it does feel that way. But you'll get used to it eventually." Then she gestured for Felicity to follow her. "Come, you must be hungry. I'll make you a snack."

While the rest of the house was creepy as hell, Felicity decided that Raisa was the exact opposite. She had a kind, warm smile that felt welcoming when everything else from the past few hours were everything but. So with her own tiny grin, she followed the maid down to the kitchen.

Once Raisa crossed the threshold, she commanded the entire space like it was her own, a tiny bit of land that belonged to her in the midst of this massive kingdom. Ushering Felicity to a stool by the kitchen island, she immediately got to work, pulling ingredients out of the cabinets and refrigerator, assembling what looked like a massive sandwich.

Felicity's stomach growled at the sight and that was when she realized she hadn't had anything to eat since that bland chicken dinner at the benefit. And that had been more than seventeen hours ago.

Raisa looked up from her work and gave Felicity a sympathetic smile at the sound of her stomach. "You have been through a lot today."

Felicity sighed. "You can say that again."

The housekeeper chuckled as she stacked the cuts of meat on the bread. "But don't worry, Ms. Felicity. Mr. Oliver will take care of you. That's what he does."

She couldn't help but furrow her eyebrows at the older woman's words. "What do you mean?"

"Mr. Oliver is a good man," Raisa answered. "He is very loyal to friends and family. He always takes care of everyone. Ever since he was little."

Felicity didn't say anything, just content to watch the woman smile as she talked about her employer. She once read somewhere that if you wanted to get the measure of a man, look at the way he treats others.

She hadn't known Oliver for very long, but everyone she talked to spoke of him in one of two ways: in warm, reverent tones like Raisa, or scared, this-is-my-boss-we're-talking-about tones. The ones who were scared hardly had any contact with the man himself, but everyone who was close to him always had a twinkle in their eyes when they recounted whatever selfless thing Oliver had done for them.

She closed her eyes as she used her perfect memory to recall her last encounter with her boss. The way he looked her in the eye and promised he wouldn't let anyone lay a finger on her. The way she felt his promise burn in her bones. She knew he would keep this promise if it meant putting himself in between her and the bullet.

The memory made her fidget in her seat with guilt. Here she was, leeching off this man's seemingly endless supply of generosity while she clandestinely worked to bring him down.

"Ms. Felicity?" Raisa said. "Are you OK?"

Felicity gave the housekeeper a weak smile in return. "Yes, sorry. A lot's happened in the past few hours, is all. A lot to think about."

The older woman reached across the counter and gently patted Felicity's hand. "It takes time, I know."

How much did this woman know, exactly? How long had she been working for the family? Had she grown up in this kind of life? Did she turn a blind eye when Oliver ordered a hit on someone? Or when they talked about bringing drugs into Starling City? Or more guns? Or prostitution?

That was the problem. As much as Felicity wanted to believe that Oliver was a good person, she couldn't erase the words from the FBI's Bratva file. She couldn't turn a blind eye to all the murders, to the hundreds of thousands of illegal arms they smuggled into the country, or all the women they exploited in their sex trafficking rings.

Oliver may have been a good person, but he was part of an organization that was evil to its core. And she didn't know how to reconcile those two things.

When Raisa had finished making her sandwich, Felicity took the plate outside and curled up on a chair on the deck next to the greenhouse. The grounds were expansive — they went on for as far as the eye could see. She tried to map the terrain in her mind, but there was just too much to take in, so she took a break and bit into her sandwich.

While she chewed, she savored the brief moment to herself. Ever since she walked through the doors last night, she'd been on edge knowing she was deep in enemy territory with nothing but her wits to protect her. Here, at least, she was outdoors away from the mansion's eerie interior vibe.

"Felicity?"

She turned at the sound of her name to see John stepping out onto the patio, sliding the greenhouse door close behind him.

"Hi," she greeted around him mouthful of sandwich.

John gave a furtive glance around him to make sure no one was around. Then he pulled out his pen and uncapped it. A red light on the tip blinked once, twice. Then it stayed steady. She recognized it as the bug killer she made for Agent Michaels last year for her mission infiltrating the Klan.

"How are you holding up?" he asked lowly.

Felicity sighed. "I've been trying to map out the place for the past four hours, but it's so fucking huge that I'm pretty sure I've only seen a quarter of it."

He grinned sardonically. "There's a basement, by the way."

She groaned and buried her face in her hands. "Why didn't they ask you to do this? You've been in place longer than I have."

"I'm not the one with the photographic memory or the uncanny drawing skills."

John glanced down at his watch. The bug killer would only last for two minutes before the battery died, so they didn't have much time.

"Listen, I wanted to find you to give you a heads up — Oliver's going to make you stay in the mansion."

Felicity's jaw dropped. "You're fucking _kidding_ me!" she hissed.

He shook his head. "He wants you close by because he's worried that you're going to get hurt, and he thinks the best bet to keeping you safe is making you stay here."

"What — how — but — " she sputtered.

John eyed the bug killer in his hand. "I just got off the phone with Lyla about it. She and Waller think it's best if you stay. Gives you the best position to gather information."

"What if I get injured? What if I'm made?" she demanded "Have _none_ of you thought of that?"

Instead of answering, he reached into the pocket inside his jacket and pulled out a syringe.

"We've got you covered," he said as he quickly swabbed down Felicity's shoulder. With a quick pinch of her skin, the needle dipped into her skin and he pushed the injector. "This is a biometric monitor in there that keeps track of your vitals and transmits them back to the FBI. It's also a location tracker. It'll be able to tell when you're in trouble, and it will also tell us where you are at any given moment."

She knew that this was supposed to make her feel better, but it was the exact opposite. Felicity could feel the beginnings of a panic attack starting to settle in. "What if I need to communicate with Lyla and you're not around?"

"Use the protocol we set up," he answered. "That's what it's there for."

"This is insane!" She was struggling to drag breath into her lungs.

"I know, I know. But this is an opportunity that we can't pass up. You'll be fine. I'm here all the time anyway. I'll make sure you'll be safe. I promise."

She bit down on her lip as she stared at the patch of red skin on her shoulder. God, what was she doing here? Just a few weeks ago she was an op tech programmer for the FBI. Now she was embedded deep in enemy territory, spying on the fucking Bratva.

Her breathing started picking up. It felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest and she was trying so hard to push it off.

"John," her knuckles had turned white as she gripped her armrests. "I really don't think I'm ready for this."

He reached forward and squeezed her shoulder gently. "You can do this," he murmured encouragingly. "It's terrifying, but you are one of the most badass women I know. If anyone can do this, it's you."

His words were meant to be comforting, but they didn't do anything to add to her peace of mind. Her breaths were shallow gasps as the thought of having to stay in this creepy mansion for the foreseeable future deep in enemy territory started sinking in. Oh God, she thought to herself. She'd be sleeping deep in the belly of the beast. She couldn't possibly be safe like this.

The pen in John's pocket let out a tiny beep, but she was still in the throes of her panic attack. Felicity clutched at her chest, like she wanted to reach into her ribcage and slow her racing heart.

"Felicity?" a new voice called out to her.

She turned her head and through her watery gaze she could see Oliver staring at her. Shit, she thought. His presence was like a pair of iron hands squeezing her lungs.

"I think she's having a panic attack," John said. His voice sounded distant, like she was hearing him from the other end of a long tunnel.

"Get her a glass of water."

When John left, Oliver crouched down until he was eye level with her. "Felicity," he said calmly as he reached forward and took her hand in his. "Take deep breaths."

She couldn't. That was the problem. It felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest, and she couldn't move it as hard as she tried.

Taking her hand, he pulled it closer to him and pressed it to his chest, right over his heart. "Felicity," he murmured. "Breathe. Feel my heartbeat."

She kept gasping, focusing more on the lack of oxygen getting to her brain. But the warmth under her fingertips started radiating through her arm and spreading into her body.

Then she felt a steady beat under her palm. The thump-thump-thump clashed against the pounding in her temples, fighting for dominance inside her. But Oliver's heartbeat persevered and eventually overtook her panic. Felicity closed her eyes, focusing on just his pulse until hers slowed enough and the constriction around her lungs eased.

"Deep breaths," Oliver murmured. The soothing sound of his voice helped calm her even more until finally the pressure on her chest had lifted. But she didn't move her hand from his chest, wanting to hold one to that sure heartbeat just for a little while longer.

"Thank you," she whispered, slowly opening her eyes to look into his.

"You're welcome." His blue gaze held steady as it bore into her.

John eventually returned with her water and she reluctantly took her hand off his chest to take the glass. "Thanks," she rasped as she sipped.

The man nodded, then turned and walked away, leaving Oliver and Felicity alone once more.

"Are you OK?" he asked softly.

She took another sip and nodded. "I'm better."

They were both quiet for a little while as Felicity's body normalized. Briefly in the back of her mind, she wondered if the biometric tracer had picked up on her panic attack back at the office.

"Do you mind if I ask what happened?" Oliver murmured.

Felicity sighed as she closed her eyes. "I don't know," she lied. "Just...a lot has happened in the past few hours. It's been a little overwhelming."

"It's not too late to change your mind, you know."

She knew that. It had been tempting to take Oliver on his offer, to whisk her away and hide her in some distant place. But there was too much at stake. She couldn't disappear, not now.

"I know," she finally answered. "But I can't."

She closed her eyes, looking for some grain of truth she could give him.

"They killed two children, Oliver. I was there. I watched it. I saw it all and it's burned into my brain for the rest of my life and I can't...I just can't get that out. It's never going to go away, and the only thing I can think of that will help is to stay. To help you."

She opened her eyes, only to find him staring back at her with the most intense expression. The way he looked at her made her previously constricted chest swell, like a balloon.

"When I told you earlier that I was going to do my damnedest to make sure no one harmed you, I meant it," he said, his voice low and serious.

Felicity nodded.

"I think the best thing to help keep you safe is for you to stay here, in the mansion," he said.

This wasn't news, since Digg warned her about it barely twenty minutes ago. But she had to put up a fight, for the sake of appearances.

Besides, it's not like she wanted to stay in the mansion anyway.

"Why?" she demanded.

"You were seen with me at the benefit," he said calmly, like he'd been expecting her protestations. "The Triad knows that you're my assistant. They're going to try everything in their power to kidnap you, or hurt you. They'll use you for leverage, or they might torture you for information."

Felicity gripped onto her glass of water until her knuckles turned white. She couldn't let herself slip back into the panic.

"Then assign me a bodyguard or something," she said. "You have like ten thousand."

He shook his head. "It's too risky. Even if I assigned someone to your detail, your apartment has too many open access points. The sliding door in your living room, the fire escape by your bedroom...I can't risk it."

That part came as a genuine surprise. "How the hell do you know what my apartment looks like?" she demanded.

"We had to clear the space to make sure there weren't any Triad there, snooping around your stuff for information," Oliver answered.

For a brief moment she felt another wave of panic. It wasn't like she had a lot of stuff in her apartment to blow her cover, but she did have her FBI badge next to where she kept her keys and a few other things, like that baseball cap and an official-use laptop.

But Digg must have taken care of it, the logical part of her insisted, otherwise he wouldn't be talking to her about her safety. He'd be asking her what the hell she was doing with so much FBI stuff.

"Have you lost your mind?" she yelled, still holding onto her anger. "That's a huge invasion of privacy!"

"It's for your protection."

"You invaded my personal space!" she insisted. "You violated my privacy! And you're telling me I have to _live_ here for the foreseeable future where I have no personal space just for my safety? I'd rather the Triad shoot me now!"

"You don't mean that," he growled.

She glared straight at him, and he returned the look.

"So what you're telling me is I don't get to go anywhere without your express permission? Is that what I'm supposed to take from this?"

He was grinding his teeth, like he very much wanted to snap at her. "That's not what I'm saying," he bit out. "What I'm saying is that it's not safe for you to be by yourself right now, and I'm not going to let another person die. Most especially you."

The way he said the last part gave pause to her anger. It also didn't help that his eyes were blazing with a kind of fire that made all the moisture disappear from her mouth.

"Do you understand?" he asked. His voice was softer this time. Almost pleading.

And just like that, all of Felicity's anger disappeared. All that was left in its place was a tired kind of resignation.

With a sigh, she closed her eyes and hung her head.

"Fine," she murmured.

She hadn't had any real freedom in two years, she thought bitterly to herself. What did it matter if she gave away what little she had left?

She felt a hand reach out to squeeze hers, and her eyes flew open. Oliver was looking at her, but there was a soft, almost relieved smile on his face.

"Thank you."

* * *

It took a lot of convincing on Felicity's part, but she eventually persuaded Oliver to let her go to her apartment herself to pick stuff to bring back with her to the Queen mansion.

But of course he wasn't going to let her go by herself.

The minute she stepped over the threshold of her apartment, it felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. It was the only place she'd ever felt free of any burdens, professional or otherwise. It was her own personal sanctuary, and she hadn't gotten to spend a lot of time there ever since she went undercover working for Oliver.

She glanced behind her to see the man himself treading lightly over the doorstep and looking around warily. His cloudy expression clashed with all the bright furniture and art she had everywhere, but for some reason his presence didn't make her uncomfortable, like she thought it might. Instead it sort of made her a little giddy.

"Nothing's going to bite you, Oliver," she giggled. "It's not like I have the place booby-trapped or anything."

He just grunted in response as he closed the door and started looking around.

Just as Felicity had thought, someone had cleared all evidence of her affiliation with the FBI from her apartment. Knowing that stuff was safely back at the office, she made a beeline for her bedroom and grabbed a suitcase from underneath her bed.

She grabbed clothes out of her dresser drawers and closets and started packing. Once she had a sufficient amount of clothes, she pulled out a separate duffle bag and gently began wrapping up all her computer stuff.

Oliver found his way into her bedroom as she put her external drive in its travel case. His eyebrows shot up his forehead as he watched her put them away.

"You've got a lot of computer stuff," he commented.

"I'm kind of a computer nerd," she admitted. "I built my first one when I was seven years old. I thought my mom would have been proud, but she was more upset that I took apart the VCR."

A rare smile crossed his face.

"How come you went to SCCC for business and accounting then? Why didn't you study computer science or something?"

Ah, right. Her cover story, she thought wryly to herself. Really it was less a cover story and more a reworked version of her personal history.

"I really love working with computers," she answered carefully. "I guess I just thought that if I had a job that dealt with computers, it would become more of a job instead of something I love. I didn't want that to happen."

He didn't say anything more as she continued packing.

Once she had gotten everything she could think off, she slung her duffle over her shoulders, and Oliver, (the gallant gentleman that he was), took her suitcase. They walked back down the hall and Felicity took in as much of her apartment as she could, breathing in the good vibes and trying to cherish every single inch of space.

"I'm going to miss you," she murmured as she ran her hand over the crocheted afghan laying across her aquamarine couch.

Then, with one last forlorn glance at her lovely apartment, she walked out with Oliver, locking the door securely behind her.

On the ride back to the Queen mansion, Oliver asked, "Why didn't you take that afghan with you?"

She raised her eyebrows in confusion. "Huh?"

"You said you were going to miss the afghan before we walked out. Why didn't you just take it with you?"

She blinked. "Oh. No, I didn't mean the afghan. Well, no, I mean I _will_ miss the afghan, but I wasn't talking just about the afghan. I was talking about the whole apartment. I meant I was going to miss my apartment."

He didn't say anything, but she could see out of the corner of her eye that he was examining her, like a bug underneath a microscope. She tried to stay as still as possible under his gaze, but she couldn't help shifting a little in discomfort.

"You know," he said after a long pause, "there are a lot of people in this city who would be jumping at the chance to live in a huge house, surrounded by servants. How come you're not one of them?"

Felicity shrugged one shoulder. "I've never required a lot, Oliver," she answered quietly. "I don't need a huge house or a fleet of servants. All I've ever wanted was a space I could call my own, where I could rest my head and not feel burdened with responsibilities. My apartment was that space for me. And as lovely as your mansion is and as nice as all your servants are, I'm only ever going to be able to think about how my life is in constant danger every single minute I'm there."

She turned her face toward the window and closed her eyes, not wanting to see whatever expression her fake boss was surely wearing. And all of a sudden, she was exhausted. Considering she hadn't gotten a lot of sleep the night before and she'd been in a hyper aware state all day, fighting off panic attacks and staying on guard to protect her cover all day, the only thing she wanted at that moment was to throw herself into a huge bed and hide under the covers for all eternity.

The next thing she knew, Felicity was indeed in a huge bed, tucked into rich red linen sheets. She took a moment to gather her surroundings, and she realized she was back in her room at Queen mansion. She must have fallen asleep on the car ride back.

But it begged the question, how did she end up in this bed? Her cheeks slowly started coloring when she realized there was a very real possibility that Oliver carried her out of the car and up the stairs, all the way to this bedroom.

God, how embarrassing.

She pulled herself out of the bed and found her duffle bag and her suitcase both sitting on the bench at the food of her massive bed. Quickly she threw open the suitcase and started digging around, looking for a pair of jeans and some nondescript T-shirt.

Once she was dressed, she left her bedroom. Glancing at the wall clock in the hallway, she saw it was nearing midnight. It seemed as good a time as any to continue her mission to map the mansion.

She'd been working methodically, from the top floors down. She'd explored all of the third floor and most of the second. Her room was on the second floor, so she decided to finish up there before wandering downstairs.

Padding around in her bare feet on the plush carpet, she started her exploration. Once she was confident she had committed everything to memory, she found the stairs in hope of finding the kitchen to grab something to eat.

She made a beeline through the foyer toward where she'd followed Raisa earlier that day. But while most of the mansion was dark and quiet, she caught a flickering light and muted voices coming from her left, down the hall where she knew Oliver's office was. Her curiosity overtook her hunger and she followed the sounds.

The door to his office was slightly ajar, which meant she could hear a terse voice.

"And just how the hell are we supposed to get the information off this thing?" someone demanded. "It's been shot to hell, literally. Did you think about that for even a second when you recklessly ran head first into the Triad stronghold?"

"I didn't do it on purpose," a pained voice hissed in answer. "I told you — "

"Yeah, yeah, you got found," the first voice sneered. "You know, Harper, I'm really starting to wonder how a dunderhead like you ever managed to get promoted to _boevik_."

"Enough," a firm voice growled. Felicity immediately recognized it as Oliver's. "What's done has been done. There's nothing we can do about it other than to try and salvage what we can from this."

"And how do you propose we do that?" the first voice asked sardonically. "Once again, the thing is riddled with bullet holes."

At that moment, the door fully swung open and Felicity froze. Oliver stood in the doorway, staring at her with one raised eyebrow and a questioning look.

"Hi," she blurted. "I wasn't eavesdropping. Eavesdropping would imply that I was being sneaky, and you guys were kind of loud and really all I wanted was to find the kitchen so I could grab like an apple or something but then I heard you guys and I got curious and that's why I'm standing out here. _Not_ eavesdropping."

The corners of his lips quirked upward. "Yeah, I suppose it can't count as eavesdropping when I heard your footsteps going down the stairs." Then he stepped away from the door and waved at her, signalling for her to come in.

Cautiously Felicity stepped over the threshold. The brown-haired kid she recognized from last night was sitting on a chair by the fireplace. Roy, she recalled to herself. That's what Oliver had called him.

His shirt lay on the floor, his hoodie unzipped and pulled off his shoulders to reveal a torso full of wounds. He had a few graze wounds on his shoulders, a huge gash across his chest and a few more smaller cuts on his abdomen. Coupled with the purpling bruise around his right eye and the split in his lip, she surmised he'd gotten into a scrape.

John was crouched next to Roy on the floor, wearing a pair of gloves and handling a needle and suture wire. His eyes were trained on the wounds he was stitching up.

A third man sat in one of the chairs in front of Oliver's desk. He had a perfectly square-shaped face with floppy salt and pepper hair and beady, cruel eyes. Felicity recognized him as the one who kept demanding who she was the night before.

"Ah, just what we need," the man sneered. "Your blonde pet."

Oliver ignored the man and went to his desk to pick something up. On closer inspection, she saw it was a laptop, riddled with huge holes in the casing. Looking at a machine as damaged as that one made her wince.

"Do you think you could get information off of this?" he asked.

She tentatively stepped forward and took the machine from him to examine it. There weren't any exit wounds, so to speak, so there was a good chance the bullets didn't hit the processor.

"I think so," she said softly. "Let me get my stuff really quick."

She ran back to her bedroom to grab her duffle bag filled with all her computer equipment, then returned to Oliver's office in record time. By then, John had moved on to stitching up the gash on Roy's chest.

"The bullet holes look mostly superficial," Felicity told Oliver as she sat down at his desk and started pulling out her laptop and a variety of chords. "I don't think the information is lost, but I'll have to take a look first."

"Why are we taking computer advice from a secretary?" the older man sneered.

"Ivo," Oliver growled. "Get out."

"What?" his lips turned upward in a cold smile. "Since when were you so sensitive?"

"You're supposed to be preparing everyone," Oliver bit out. "Go."

"Fine, fine," Ivo sighed, holding his hands up in surrender as he stood from his chair. "I'll know better than to insult your pet the next time."

When he stood, he reached over and patted Felicity on the head. She jerked away from his touch, scowling up at him, but he simply smirked.

"Though I must say," he said in a cold voice that sent shivers down Felicity's spine, "she is awfully cute."

A menacing growl rumbled from Oliver's chest that simply made Ivo chuckle as he sauntered out of the office. Once he was gone, Oliver closed the door and turned the lock.

"God, what a creeper," Felicity mumbled under her breath as she turned her attention to the damaged laptop in front of her. "It makes sense he'd work for the Russian mob because I doubt he could get a normal job. He'd be too busy weirding everyone out."

John snorted in amusement, and even a tiny smile flickered in Oliver's eyes before it dissipated. "I'm sorry about him," the Bratva captain said in a more somber tone. "I'm sorry for any discomfort he caused."

Felicity just shrugged. "Don't worry about it," she said with a tiny sigh. "If I had a nickel for every time some old guy inappropriately hit on me...well, let's just say I'd never have to work again."

The room fell into silence as Felicity worked. She hooked up the damaged laptop to hers and ran the information transfer. Once it was complete, she pulled up the files.

She hummed to herself as she clicked through, taking in as much of the information as she could, hoping to store it away for when she eventually met with Lyla again. "These look like floorplans."

"To what?" Oliver asked, coming in closer to look over her shoulder.

And all of a sudden, she was very aware of his presence. He stood just inches behind her, close enough where she could breathe in his scent; he smelled of soap and some woodsy kind of aftershave. And something else. Something distinctly _Oliver_ , something she couldn't quite put her finger on.

His smell was doing things to her, and that was terrifying.

"Um...it looks like the Exchange Building," Felicity said, forcefully dragging her thoughts back to the task at hand. Then she frowned. "Wait a minute, isn't that we're they're hosting the auction for Unidac Industries on Wednesday?"

Oliver nodded, his eyes and jaws tight.

"Roy here found that when he was snooping on a Triad meeting," John said as he applied a wad of gauze and tape over the stitched up gash. "Unfortunately, they also found him."

"Do you think they're going to shoot up the auction?" Roy asked.

"They shot up a room full of innocent people during a benefit for sick children, I wouldn't put it past them," John murmured.

Oliver's eyes were still on the screen staring at the floor plans with such intensity she thought he might make her screen combust. "There are way too many points of entry," he said. "We don't have enough men available during the middle of the day to cover them all."

"Then what are we going to do?" John asked.

Felicity watched as Oliver turned the situation over in his head. It was kind of fascinating to her to see him think in action. She could see different decisions cross his mind just by watching the intensity fluctuate in his eyes.

"We're going to have to take this to the police," Oliver finally said. "We need the extra manpower, and they're the only ones who can provide it."

John finished stitching Roy up, and the younger man shrugged his hoodie back on, hissing as the movement pulled at his wounds. John discarded the gloves he'd been wearing as he stared at Oliver skeptically.

"And how do you propose we approach them?" John asked. "It's not like we're on super great terms with the SCPD anymore. Not since Lance took over the department, anyway."

"It might be his department, but Lance isn't in charge of the police, and I think it's time we remind him of that fact." Then Oliver turned to Felicity. "Put all of this information on a jumpdrive. We're going to pass it on to them tonight."

Felicity did as she was directed, pulling out a blank drive from her stash and plugging it into her laptop. As the information downloaded, she surreptitiously pulled up the ghost FTP server and copied all the files into it, knowing that Cisco would see them back at headquarters.

As the files loaded, she tentatively cleared her throat.

"Um...I'm still fairly new to this whole operation, so this might be just a totally stupid question, but I just have to ask — do we know _why_ the Triad is attacking us like this?"

"We've always had competing interests," Roy answered. "The Bratva has held on to this territory for decades, but with the growing Chinese immigrant population, they've been trying for the past few years to take it from us."

"No, I get that," Felicity shook her head. "I meant why are they attacking us in public? In broad daylight? From what I understand — which totally isn't much — wars of this...nature...are waged underground. Not in public. The Triad attacked a very public event, and now they're planning on attacking in daylight."

Her question lingered in the air as everyone in the room started thinking.

"Maybe they're getting more confident," Roy suggested after a long beat. "Maybe they think they have the resources and the strength to get away with it."

"Or maybe the opposite," Digg countered. "Maybe they're getting desperate and they're trying to attack us in any way possible."

"No," Oliver finally answered. Felicity turned her head to stare at him, and his jaw was clenched, a fire burning hot in his eyes. "They're trying to draw us out into the open. They're trying to draw _me_ out into the open."

"What do you mean?" Roy asked.

"They're trying to tarnish the Queen family's reputation," he replied. "It's not widely known that we're head of the Bratva. Not to the greater public, anyway. They think by exposing our affiliation with underground crime, they can get the city to turn on us."

A sudden, pained expression flashed in his eyes. But it disappeared as quickly as it came.

"It's why they killed my father."

The room echoed in silence following that statement. Felicity hardly dared to breathe.

Of course she knew that Robert Queen had died five years ago from two gunshot wounds to the chest while he was just walking down the street. But the investigation into his death never got very far. The FBI files she'd read in preparation for her mission had strongly speculated Underground infighting, but at the time the information she processed didn't resonate with her. It was just another event in history that had little to no bearing to her life.

But now, watching Oliver fight the grief she could see warring inside of him, it no longer felt like an impersonal passing. She wanted to stand from her seat and wrap her arms around his shoulders.

She couldn't, obviously. That would have been insanely inappropriate.

It still didn't stop her from wanting to, though.

Eventually the information drop to both the FTP server and the USB drive was complete and Felicity took the jump drive out of the port. Oliver took it from her and handed it to John. "Sin has a better relationship with SCPD. Get this to her and she'll know who to take it to."

John nodded and immediately walked out of the office. To Roy, Oliver said, "We've got a bed ready for you downstairs, if you want it."

The younger man nodded, grabbing his shirt off the floor before gingerly lifting himself out of the seat. "Thanks, boss."

Then he left. And it was just Felicity alone with her fake boss.

Oliver was as quiet and still as a stone statue after his men left. He stood in front of the fireplace, his back turned to her, watching the dying flames crackle in the hearth. Felicity just sat there nibbling on her lip, helpless and unsure of what to say.

The uncomfortable silence grew to a deafening din until finally she couldn't take it anymore. She had to say something.

"I'm sorry about your father," she blurted nervously. "I didn't know. I always thought his murder was unsolved."

He slowly turned from the fireplace to face her. His face was carefully blank, but she could see a flash of pain in his eyes, made all the more dramatic by the flickering shadows cast by the firelight.

"We covered up the cause of his death," he said quietly. "We couldn't let it get out that he was killed by the Triad because people would start asking why."

To her utter surprise, Felicity felt tears start to sting her eyes. She knew a little about how it felt to lose a father. Under totally, wildly different circumstances, of course. But the pain was a little similar.

She got up and walked around the desk, stopping to stand a yard away from him. "You know," she said, her voice soft, "I know I'm just your executive assistant...but if...if there's ever anything you want to talk about it — about anything, really — I'm here to listen."

Oliver's guarded look slowly melted away until it revealed the most beautiful but tragic smile in the world. Then he reached forward and rested a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Thank you, Felicity."


	6. Chapter 6

It was the second event in less than a week that Felicity attended as Oliver's executive assistant in a pretty dress.

She kept running nervous hands over the hem of the blue frock, like somehow there were magical threads in it to keep her calm, as long as she kept rubbing it.

Felicity swept her gaze around the table once more. The place was packed to the hilt with guards from all different stripes. The most obvious ones were those dressed in police uniforms. She counted ten of them, each manning different access points.

Then there were the less obvious ones. Oliver told her he had his own guard on the detail today. She saw eight of them right off the bat. They were dressed in suits and ties which wasn't necessarily out of the ordinary in this crowd. But it was also pretty easy to tell they were Bratva because they were huge. Hulking. In fact, she was kind of surprised that they found suits in their size.

Then there were the even more obscure ones. A few yards outside the entrance of the building, a homeless man in a ragged windbreaker and a frayed gray beanie sat outside with a sign and a tin cup. But she recognized the face — it was one she'd seen walking around the FBI offices in a clean suit and shiny shoes. She never did catch his name, but she always knew he preferred the Glock 22 over the 23, so she called him Twenty-two in her head.

In addition to Twenty-two, Lyla was posing as one of the servers. Felicity was trying very hard not to keep staring at her. As her handler, Lyla was the only person in the room she really trusted (other than John, of course), but if she kept looking at Lyla it would seem suspicious.

Lyla and Twenty-two were only there in case something went horribly, horribly wrong. In case someone had taken out all the police and Bratva guards. But considering there were eighteen of them (and likely more that Felicity couldn't see), constantly patrolling and roving around the place, she very much doubted anything was going to go wrong. Or at the very least she _hoped_ nothing was going to go wrong.

"You should really try to stop looking so concerned."

Felicity jumped at the voice that came from behind her. Sure enough, when she turned it was none other than her fake boss, giving her a tiny grin that under normal circumstances would have made her heart stop. However, since she was in a room that had a very high chance of getting shot up by Chinese criminals, her heart was too busy racing with anxiety to pay attention to her pheromones.

"Sorry," she mumbled, even though the worry lines didn't disappear from her face. "It's just hard to get rid of the feeling that you're about to get hurt at any moment."

"Please try to relax," Oliver said as he gently laid a hand on her shoulder. "You're drawing suspicion to yourself."

"Well that's not going to matter when the Triad come and shoot everyone up," she muttered.

"What a cheerful attitude," he deadpanned. A server came around carrying a tray full of champagne flutes, and Oliver grabbed one and put it in her hand. "Here, drink this."

Felicity grimaced at the instruction, but took it nonetheless. "Why are they serving champagne at this thing? Isn't this technically a business function or whatever?"

"Yes, but it's also an auction and people are known to be more free with their money when they're a little sauced."

"Nice." She lifted the flute to her lips and took a long sip.

"Come on," he said, cupping his hand around her elbow to lead her toward a group of people. "Work will help you keep your mind off of everything, and I need you to help with introduction interference."

Right, she thought to herself. Work. She could do that.

Trying her hardest to shove the thought of impending doom to the back of her brain, she followed Oliver as he started working his charm to everyone in the local business community that came to bid on Unidac Industries.

As Oliver schmoozed, Felicity did indeed find herself distracted. She was distracted by just how easily her fake boss seemed to ratchet up the charm around a group of business Dementors (as she liked to call them, because they sucked all the soul out of the room).

It was almost dizzying, keeping up with all the different facets of his personality. When he was at QC or around the business community, he was affable. Charming. His smile didn't quite meet his eyes whenever he laughed, but it was a smile nonetheless and it made everyone around him feel at ease.

He was the complete opposite when he was conducting Bratva business. Granted, Felicity had only seen him in his underworld environment twice, but it had been chilling both times. His eyes turned to blue steel, his jaw was clenched and there was a permanent wrinkle etched in between his eyebrows. Every time he spoke to one of his associates, there was a cold air of authority that warned of what might happen if his orders weren't followed.

But when he wasn't at QC or when he wasn't running the Russian mob, there were brief glimpses of something entirely different. She saw it in fleeting moments: the morning after the hospital benefit, the time he accompanied her back to her apartment or just now, when he was trying to get her to calm down. In those moments, she could see a true, genuine smile that softened his eyes and sometimes made her heart stop. His voice would get soft and lilting, almost like music. His hands would come up to touch her arm and she'd be left with the burning sensation his fingertips left on her skin for hours afterward.

Those moments were few and far between, but whenever they came around she felt warm inside. It was almost like a secret she shared with him; like she was the only one who knew this side existed, and she was the only one he was willing to show this side of him.

A long bell tone sounded, signaling the beginning of the bidding. Oliver gave his last farewell to the people he was talking to and together, he and Felicity started walking toward the auction room. She turned to him, about to make a comment when John appeared out of nowhere to grab Oliver by the shoulder.

"There's a situation," he said in a low voice. "I need you to come with me."

Oliver didn't hesitate to follow his body man. Felicity started to walk with them, but Oliver held up his hand. "I need you to stay here," he said.

She scowled. "Where you go, I go."

He fixed her with his own glare, but she met it head on. She could tell he was gearing up to say something, but John interrupted the moment.

"Oliver."

The urgency was enough to make him drop it. With one last disapproving look, he turned and followed John out of the room, Felicity right next to him. They weaved their way through the crowds and through an employee door that led to the stairwell.

That's when she saw it.

"Holy shit," she breathed.

In the corner of the stairwell was a device, about the size of a suitcase with a million different wires hooked up to a digital clock interface. And if the blinking numbers on the interface were anything to go by, it was going to go off in five minutes.

The air in that room suddenly felt very thin indeed.

"The rest of the guards searched the entire building," Digg said in a breathless rush. "This is the only one we found, but according to the blueprints, this is thing sits over the cornerstone of the building. If it goes off, the whole structure comes down."

"Digg," Oliver said in a calm voice that seemed to clash against everything Felicity was feeling at the moment, "go find Captain Lance immediately. Tell them to evacuate the building, and get everyone to help him. Get everyone out of here."

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"Try and disarm this thing. Felicity, go with Digg. Get everyone out of here."

His order jumpstarted Felicity's brain, and immediately she was indignant.

"Oh like hell I'm leaving you here with a fucking _bomb_ ," she said through gritted teeth.

"Felicity, I need you to get out of here!" he yelled. "This is not a request or a negotiation!"

She desperately wanted to tell him to shove it, but instead she scowled and pushed past him toward the bomb.

"Felicity!" he shouted. "Get away from that thing!"

She didn't pay attention to him. It was almost laughable, she thought, that Oliver thought he could disarm this thing when he didn't have any diffusing skills to speak of. Felicity, however, was considered somewhat of an expert on wires and circuits. If anyone in that building was going to disarm it, it was going to be her.

Kneeling in front of the device, she pulled out the emergency tool kit she carried with her everywhere out of her purse and pulled out the miniature screwdriver and unscrewed the front panel. It unveiled a mess of different colored wires.

Quickly her eyes scanned the picture before her. Then her mind started rifling through her mental files, trying to see if she'd ever seen anything like this in the field training she'd taken at the FBI.

"Felicity," Oliver's rushed and terrified voice came to her just inches from her ear. "Get out of here this _instant_. You can't help here. Please. Please get out."

She could hear the desperation in his voice, but as she stared at the device it all became irrelevant.

Because she knew how to disarm this thing.

Without saying a single word, she pulled out a pair of clippers from her toolkit. She rooted around the tangle of wires, looking for the red-white wire. Once she located it, she took her clippers and snipped it.

For a millisecond afterward, it felt like time froze. Felicity held her breath still in her lungs, and she felt Oliver tense next to her. In fact, she was terrified for a second that the bomb had gone off just based by how all noise had stopped around her.

But then the clock stopped, right at 1:30.

She let out the breath she held and slumped forward, tears flooding her eyes in relief.

Air rushed back into the room as Oliver and Felicity stood straight. Her knees were still shaking, and Oliver reached forward automatically to steady her around the waist.

"OK," he sighed. His voice wavered and for some reason it made her want to giggle hysterically. "OK. Digg, go find Lance and get the police to investigate this thing. I want to know who planted it. In the meantime, the event isn't over yet and there's still time for someone to sabotage it."

The guard nodded before turning on his heel and running to find the police captain.

"Well," Felicity said, letting out a huff of a breath. "I don't think I've ever felt more relieved to have a photographic memory."

"Felicity," Oliver said, slowly, enunciating every syllable in her name.. His voice was low, but there was steel in it. Like he was angry. "I told you to evacuate. I told you to get out of here."

She whipped her head to stare at him. "Oliver — "

"I _told_ you that you needed to get out," his voice got louder, echoing through the stairwell. "Why couldn't you do that? It was a simple request!"

To say she was astonished would have been an understatement. Her jaw dropped as she stared at him in shock. "Oliver — "

"You could have _died_ , do you realize that? You could have died! We all could have died! But no, you had to stay here and play a hero!"

Her shock gave way to immediate anger. "Hey!" she shouted, as the fire flared up in her. "I stayed because you needed someone here who knew what they were doing! In case you forgot, I know my way around circuits and wires! I _knew_ how to disarm this thing!"

"What if you didn't?" he demanded with a scowl. "What would have happened if you had clipped the wrong wire? Then we both would have been killed!"

"Are you kidding me?" she shot back. "The clock started at five minutes! There was no way I would have been able to evacuate in time! And I wasn't about to let you take on this thing by yourself!"

Of all the reactions he might have had to her successfully disarming a bomb that could have leveled the entire building and everyone in it, the last thing she expected was for him to be angry with her.

Unfortunately, Felicity's invocation of logic didn't seem to sway him. "You know what your problem is?" he hissed. "You are incapable of following orders! First when I told you to get out when we were under attack at the benefit and now with this — "

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you would have died both times if I hadn't stepped in!"

Oliver let out a growl. "That's hardly the point! The point is you can't follow simple instructions when it comes to life and death situations! You're reckless, careless and you can be just _unbelievably_ stupid! One of these days you're going to get us all in trouble!"

Felicity's rage came to a boiling point as his words hit her right in the chest.

She felt angry tears sting at the back of her eyes, but she viciously fought them back. The last thing she needed was for this — this ungrateful _asshole_ to see her cry.

"I need some air," she declared bitterly before brushing past him.

The only sound in the stairwell was the clacking of her heels. It echoed around them, pounding out a pointed rhythm.

She didn't let her tears fall until she reached the door.

* * *

 _I don't want to do this anymore_.

It was the first thing Felicity typed into the encrypted chat she set up with Lyla. After the bomb was disarmed and the rest of the auction canceled, Felicity passed a note to John who in turn passed a note to his fiancee. It told her to expect contact from her late in the evening.

So here she was, locked up in a room in a house full of Bratva thugs, sitting at her computer desperately clinging to the lone thread of communication she had to a life that wasn't full of lies and violence.

 _What happened?_

She sighed. After her heated exchange with Oliver, she ran out of the building so she could cry without anyone seeing. John eventually found her and calmed her down enough to be able to get into a car with her fake boss. However, she refused to look at him the entire ride, keeping her body stiff and her eyes out the window. Once they were back at the Queen mansion, she ran up the stairs to her temporary bedroom and locked the door behind her.

She may have been acting like a petulant teenager, but she didn't care.

She stayed in her room for the rest of the day, and refused to open the door to anyone, even Raisa when she knocked to bring by her dinner. It was now midnight as she chatted with her handler on the secure server she hacked into, and she still hadn't emerged from her room.

 _We almost got blown up and when I prevented it from happening, target yelled at me._

Seeing it written out on the screen in front of her now, she realized how immature it sounded, and Lyla was bound to scoff at this. But she wasn't there. She didn't see how angry Oliver was, or hear what exactly he said.

 _I know this is tough, but you can do this._

Felicity sighed as she stared at Lyla's words on the screen.

 _Besides, there's a lot riding on this and you know it._

That's what it came back to. If she successfully finished this mission, she'd never have to work for the FBI again. Her record would once again be blemish-free and she could start a new life wherever she wanted. She could move to a remote island and live off the land, or she could bury herself anonymously in a tiny town in the middle of the Rust Belt. The world would be hers.

She'd be free.

 _Barry and Cisco say hang in there. We're all rooting for you to succeed._

Her lips pulled up into the first genuine smile she could muster up in hours. God, she missed Barry and Cisco. She missed just being in the OpTech lab back in the office, goofing off with Cisco or teasing Barry as he worked in the forensics lab.

 _Thank you. And thank the boys for me._

 _No problem. Hang in there._

With that, she logged off the server and closed her laptop. Then she got up off the bed and wandered toward the huge window on the other side of her room and sat on the window seat.

As much as Felicity disliked living in the Queen mansion, she had to admit that one of the perks was the window seat. Her window gave her an unimpeded view of the south side of the Queen's property. But not like she could see any of it at the moment, since the sun had long since set. Instead she was just staring out at the darkness, wondering when the hell her life had gotten so weird and complicated.

Closing her eyes, she thought back to Oliver's angry words. It was a new facet she'd yet to see: the fire burning in his steel blue eyes, the angry set of his eyebrows. Coming from a Bratva captain, all of it really should have scared her. But in the immediate aftermath, she reacted with her own anger. How _dare_ he yell at her. She was the reason he was still alive in the first place.

But after she pulled away, dwelling instead on it for hours she felt hurt. His words about getting everyone in trouble was what hurt the most. Even all these hours later, it stung her to think about. In reality, he had no idea just how right he was.

No, she thought firmly. She slammed the door hard before her thoughts could wander down that long-abandoned hallway. She wasn't going to go there.

This is stupid, a different, rational part of her brain insisted. Here she was, acting like a petulant, emo teenager, curled up on a window seat staring out at the darkness. Over what? A Bratva captain yelling at her? For crying out loud, he wasn't even her real boss! Why the hell did she care if he yelled at her? Why the hell did she care what he thought about her? As long as he didn't fire her, she still had access. She still could do her job. She still had her cover and soon the mission would be over and she'd be gone faster than you could say her name.

Her jaw clenched as she thought with renewed determination of her end goal. The objective was to finish the mission and get the fuck out of here. And she wasn't about to let some billionaire, pretty boy Bratva captain get in the way.

No, she decided firmly. She wasn't going to let him get to her. She wasn't going to give a shit about what he thought. He was just a pawn in the end. So fuck him and his ungrateful bullshit.

She had a job to do, and she was going to do it.

* * *

Felicity got to the office before Oliver did. She managed to sweet talk John into driving her, just so she wouldn't have to endure breakfast with him. Her new plan of attack was to deal with him only as much as she had to. She'd be professional at work, she'd be detached if she found herself in Bratva meetings and she'd avoid him like the plague everywhere else.

She explained her plan to John in the car, and he just shot her a look through the rearview mirror.

"You do understand that part of the mission is to get close to Oliver Queen, right? You were supposed to befriend him and become a confidante."

She shook her head. "I know, but becoming his confidante is complicating the overall mission."

The car came to a stop in front of QC offices. John turned in the front seat to look at her.

She knew what was coming. He was going to scold her for not sticking to the mission, for going off the rails. But if they wanted someone who was going to color inside the lines, they should have picked someone else, especially considering she didn't have any fucking field experience.

"I've got to go," she said before John could open his mouth. She didn't want to listen to it. So she pulled open the car door and scrambled out and up to the office.

Oliver didn't get into the office until 8 a.m., as usual. When he stepped off the executive elevator, she was ready for him. Her face was a mask of professional blandness as he walked toward her desk.

"Good morning, Mr. Queen," she said politely as she handed him his morning coffee and a stack of post-its. "I've ordered the messages here in terms of priority. You have a meeting with the CFO in an hour and Captain Lance wanted me to tell you that he will be dropping by later this afternoon to discuss what happened at the auction yesterday. He's gathering eyewitness accounts for the report."

Oliver's face was unreadable, like he was a mix of different emotions that were battling inside of him. Felicity would have laughed under any other circumstance, but she was desperately trying to hold onto her aloof attitude.

"Felicity — "

"You should really return that message from your mother, Mr. Queen," she interrupted him. "I promised her you would call as soon as you got in." And with that, she turned away, back to her computer.

He seemed to get the message because she heard him emit a soft sigh before going into his office.

The rest of the work day passed by much in the same fashion. Felicity kept her boss at arm's length with her cool and formal mask. For the most part, Oliver followed her lead and acted professionally as well. Then when it came time to close up for the day, they left and got in the same car with John as the driver, traveling in total silence.

The minute they arrived at the Queen mansion, Felicity once again bolted out of the car as fast as she could and ran up the stairs to her room. She stayed up there on her computer, skipping dinner downstairs once again as she hacked into the FBI's server to update her mission report remotely.

Around 9 p.m. she heard a knock on her door. Setting aside her computer, she got up from the bed and opened it to find Oliver standing on the other side. Immediately her face once again donned her mask of professionality.

"Mr. Queen," she said politely. "Can I help you?"

This time, Oliver's expression was much less conflicted. His eyes were pained as he looked at her, but she refused to let his eyes affect her.

"Felicity," he said. "Look, I'm sorry."

"About what?" she asked blandly.

"About...about all that stuff I said the other day. I'm really sorry. I just...I panicked. It was the stress of the situation and I said things I didn't mean."

Felicity held fast to her mask and her disaffected attitude. He could have apologized until he was blue in the face, but it wouldn't have taken away what he said. Besides, she had a job to do, she thought determinedly to herself. She couldn't forget that.

"It's fine, Mr. Queen," she answered. "Did you want something else?"

"Oh, come on," he whispered, his eyes filled with a desperation she hadn't seen before. "Why are you calling me Mr. Queen?"

Her mask almost cracked at hurt in his voice. Almost.

"Because you were right," she answered. Her voice sounded so distant, even to her, like she was actually hovering high above the scene. She wasn't actually part of it, she was just witnessing it. "I'm just your executive assistant, Mr. Queen. I should have listened to your orders."

"No," he insisted. "Felicity, you're…" he trailed off, like he was struggling to come up with the words that would describe just what she was. "Felicity, you're more than just my executive assistant. I never should have said any of those things. Felicity."

His arm reached forward to land on her shoulder, but the minute it did, she gently pulled herself away from his grip. "Mr. Queen, it's getting late and I was planning to go to bed soon. Is there anything you need from me?"

She hadn't raised a hand, but the look on his face made it seem like she'd slapped him.

"No," he finally murmured. "No, there wasn't."

She nodded. "Very well. Good night, Mr. Queen."


	7. Chapter 7

It lasted a week.

Seven days of Felicity acting like a robot around him. And sure, after the first few days the anger that had originally fueled her indignation had dulled until it was nothing than a low simmer. But if there was one thing anyone should know about her, it was that she was about as stubborn as she was brilliant. And her IQ hovered around the 200 mark (give or take a few points depending on the test) so that was saying something.

Oliver didn't stop trying to crack her resolve, though. He never stopped calling her by her first name. He always smiled softly when she walked into the room. He tried to share his lunch with her on multiple occasions, only for her to decline politely then retreat into the women's restroom and eat her meal by herself in the handicap stall. He even tried apologizing several more times, and Felicity just accepted them with a nod and a bland smile before returning to whatever it was she was doing when he interrupted her.

Yes, she held her ground for seven days. The detached quiet made the week last longer than it normally would have, but she tried occupying herself with things. Like hacking into the SCPD case file on the auction incident. She was also remotely keeping track of all the Bratva meetings Oliver held in his home office, thanks to the listening device she planted in the binder clip she put on those documents she delivered the first time she came to the Queen mansion. John might have thought she was shirking her duties to the mission, but she was still getting stuff done. Just not the way she was _supposed_ to be doing it.

But her self-imposed distance keeping came to a sudden and abrupt end. All thanks to a bitter ex-girlfriend.

Oliver and Felicity had finished the work day, and they were walking together in silence to the town car that awaited them. Then, all of a sudden, a figure cloaked in black leather and wearing a full helmet rode up on a motorcycle. The figure was only a few yards away before pulling out a gun from their waistband and firing it right at them.

Felicity immediately dropped to the ground and covered her head the minute she saw the gun, and she didn't dare lift her head until she heard the bike's motor drive away. Once she was certain the danger had passed, she looked up and realized Oliver was also lying on the ground a few yards away from her.

The only difference was there was a pool of blood gathering underneath his body.

For a moment, she felt like her heart stopped. But then the pounding beat came back, jolting her into action.

"Oliver!" she shouted as she jumped to her hands and knees and scrambled to his side. He was lying on his back, spread eagle with a very prominent bullet wound in his shoulder, a bloodstain blooming in the fabric of his light gray suit.

"Oliver?" she cried out in panic. "Oliver!"

He made no response to her terrified cries. Shitshitshit, she thought to herself. He had to be alive. He just _had_ to be. She pressed two fingers to the side of his throat and felt a rush of relief when she could feel a weak pulse.

Seconds later, John was at her side. "What happened?" he demanded. "Did you see catch what happened?"

"There was a person on a motorcycle that drove up to us and shot at him," she answered in a rush as she ripped off the hem of her dress and pressed the cloth to the gushing bullet wound. "I couldn't catch a face because of the helmet, but the license plate was EER WU56."

"Right." Then he slipped his arms underneath Oliver's body and lifted him off the ground with a grunt. Felicity's hand followed, still pressing as hard as she could against the wound. "We have to get him out of here fast, before anyone finds out."

"What about the blood on the concrete? Or the security footage from the cameras outside QC tower? Or the red light cameras at that intersection?"

"I'll call up some Bratva associates to clean up the mess, and you can take care of the footage later," John answered. They rushed as fast as they could to the waiting town car. "Right now, we have to get him to the mansion."

John gently loaded Oliver into the backseat of the car before rushing around to the driver's seat. Felicity clambered in, immediately going back to tamponading the wound.

On the way there, Oliver's eyes started fluttering, and his arms started twitching, like he was fighting his way to consciousness.

"Fe...Felicity…" he grunted.

"Yes," she murmured soothingly, pressing her hand even harder against his shoulder. "Yes, I'm here. I'm here, Oliver. We're taking you home. We're going to take care of you."

The thought seemed to soothe him because his eyes fluttered shut again, but his hand landed on her arm.

John made it back to the mansion in record speed and once they got there, two of the footmen guarding the front entrance ran up to meet them and help them carry Oliver out of the car. Together, they all rushed down to the facilities in the basement.

It was the first time Felicity had been to the basement, and much to her surprise it was built just like a hospital. They first ran through a space that looked remarkably like a waiting room, down to the outdated magazines. But then they breezed past it, through a set of double doors and down a long hallway, then another set of double doors.

The room on the other side was an operating theater, complete with a scrub room on the side. The two footmen and John gently lifted him onto the table and once he was steady, Felicity was right by his side, pressing against his wound.

"Thanks, guys," John said, dismissing the two men. "We got it from here."

With a nod, they left the room.

"So someone's coming, right?" Felicity said once they were alone. "You guys have a surgeon on retainer, right? A Dr. Caitlin Snow?"

"I made the call in the car, but she's in the middle of something right now. We're on our own for this one."

A wave of panic overtook her. "You can't be serious!" she shouted. "John, I don't know _anything_ about taking a bullet out of someone!"

"Yes, but you've read the FBI field manual cover to cover and you also have a photographic memory," he said under his breath. "Besides, I have some medical training. He's going to be fine."

For the next hour, the two of them worked. Felicity scraped every corner of her brain for every piece of medical information she could remember as she and John both extracted the bullet from his body that was just centimeters away from his carotid artery. There was a short scare when the heart monitor let out a sustained beep and they had to use the defibrillator to jump start his heart.

Once he was stable, Felicity collapsed onto a chair next to the operating table. "Well here's something I never thought I'd be doing."

"You mean sitting in the Queen mansion in an underground operating room after defibrillating a Bratva captain's heart?"

"Yeah," she sighed, closing her eyes. "Exactly."

He chuckled. "To be honest, with how cold you've been acting toward him lately, I was a little surprised that you were willing to help him.

Felicity rolled her eyes. "Oh come on, John. He was shot and bleeding on the sidewalk. Of course I was going to help him."

"Could have fooled me. Could have fooled everyone."

She glared at the man in question. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've saved his life twice before. _Twice_. This will have been the third time in the three short weeks that I've known him that I've saved his life. I don't think it's really a stretch to anyone's imagination that I would have done what I could to help him once again."

John chuckled. "You're right. I guess I'm just saying that you've been distant, and it's really been affecting him."

Felicity shook her head. "I doubt that a lot."

"I'm serious. For the past week he's been distracted during Bratva business, he's been pacing his office, snapping at everyone. The only time he acts less irritated is when you're in the room, and he tries his hardest to get you to look at him. Then when you don't he tries harder, and the minute you leave he just gets depressed."

She turned her head to stare at the man on the operating table. His face was blank and clear, as she'd never seen it before.

"What are you trying to tell me, John?"

"What I'm trying to say is give the man a break. He made a mistake. He yelled at you for the wrong reasons, but he was scared and terrified and under a lot of stress at the thought of you and a bunch of other people blowing up. It doesn't necessarily excuse what he did in that moment, but he's since apologized and he's done everything he could think of to make it up to you. So let go of this grudge already."

John was making way more sense that she cared to admit, so she stayed silent. When he realized she wasn't going to say anything else, he slowly stood from his seat.

"I'm going to make the calls to see if they cleaned up the scene. Wait here and tell me when he wakes up."

Felicity nodded, her eyes never leaving Oliver's prone form.

Once John left, the silence in the freezing cold room afforded her the first opportunity since the shooting to think about the weird situation she'd found herself in and also to really think about John's words. She thought about how desperate Oliver seemed to win her forgiveness, and whether he really was beating himself up over it.

What would it mean if he was? Did it mean that he cared about her opinion? _Why_ would he care about her opinion? In all honesty, that was a good thing. She was _supposed_ to be winning his trust, as a part of the mission. But the fact that she was succeeding was both bewildering and a little terrifying. Becoming his confidante and getting drawn into his world meant she would soon be participating in things she wasn't sure she had the stomach for.

And then Felicity wondered if she really had the strength to continue holding her grudge. Remaining angry at someone required a lot of energy, and she already had to stretch her attention pretty thin, what with her secret identity and everything else.

Then seeing Oliver lying on the ground, a pool of blood gathering underneath his body from the bullet that burned right into him...it was another image she'd never be able to get out of her head. God, the panic that overtook her, the terror that almost choked off her air supply…

That was when she realized that she couldn't let him die.

Goddamn it, she thought as she closed her eyes. She cared about him. She cared whether he lived or died.

She was so monumentally screwed.

A few hours later, three Bratva footmen helped Felicity move him to one of the recovery rooms in the basement hospital. The room he was in resembled a patient's room in that there was a bed and monitors and a TV bolted to the corner of the ceiling. But there were still key differences, like the lack of windows and the fact that the bed was a full-sized affair with deep red sheets that likely had a thread count well over 1,000.

Eight hours after Felicity and John had extracted the bullet, Oliver stirred. Felicity was dozing off in the reclining leather chair next to her bed, but the moment she heard him shift, she bolted upright.

"Oliver?" she whispered as she gently laid a hand on his forearm. "Oliver, can you hear me?"

His eyes fluttered open and she felt a wave of relief wash through her as his bleary but beautiful blue irises looked up at her.

He blinked a couple of times, each time his pupils sharpening realization. After a few seconds, he sighed.

"I guess I didn't die again. Again," he rasped. "Cool."

Felicity slumped in her seat with a heavy sigh. Christ, she'd been biting her nails for the past eight hours, begging and praying that he'd wake up and the first words out of his mouth were _that_.

"You're welcome," she bit sarcastically. Though the harshness in her tone was belied by her relief that he seemed no worse for the wear.

A lazy smile started to spread over his face. "Thank you, Felicity."

She felt herself returning his expression in spite of herself. She reached forward and slipped her hand into his big, warm callused one.

"For what it's worth," she murmured, "I'm glad you didn't die."

* * *

Getting shot didn't slow Oliver Queen down. Dr. Caitlin Snow wouldn't let him leave his bedroom, but that only meant that everyone had to meet him there.

Just a day after getting shot, Felicity sat by his side with John and the rest of the _boevik_ to discuss who exactly had shot at him. As she quickly learned, there was a lot more going on behind the scenes in the criminal underground than she anticipated.

"It was Helena," Fyers announced.

Everyone seated around Oliver's bed made noises of ironic acknowledgement. Oliver just sighed.

"Um...I'm sorry," Felicity interjected quietly, "but who's Helena?"

"Helena Bertinelli," Roy answered. "Daughter of Frank Bertinelli and former heir to the Bertinelli crime syndicate."

"Also known as Oliver's crazy ex-girlfriend," Sin smirked.

Well that caught Felicity off guard. She felt a weird and inconvenient squirming kind of sensation in her stomach at the thought of Oliver with another woman.

She chose to ignore that for the moment.

"What do you mean by 'former heir?'" she inquired.

"She chose to abdicate her crime throne after her father ordered her fiance killed a few years ago," Roy piped up. "Ever since then, she's been hell bent on getting revenge on her father, mostly by destroying his empire, both above and underground."

"So…" Felicity turned to look at Oliver, "is that why she shot you?"

The man himself squirmed uncomfortably under his covers.

"Most likely," John answered for him. "It also probably didn't help that he broke up with her by ceasing all communication."

She raised her eyebrows. "You ghosted her?" Felicity accused.

He squirmed some more. "She was starting to get a little stalker-like and that was the only way I could think of for her to get the message."

"Huh."

Oliver glared at her. "I don't appreciate your tone."

"I don't have a tone."

"Really? Because I distinctly heard something in your tone. Something that sounded a lot like judgment."

"You were just shot, so it's a little easy to understand that you're delusional at the moment."

"Now I'm hearing snark."

"Well you were bound to get something right eventually."

Sin snickered. "I like her," she told Roy.

Oliver huffed impatiently. "All right. So it was Helena. Other than the fact that she hates her father and other than the fact that she hates me, what other motive would she have to shoot me in broad daylight?"

Felicity snorted. "What, those aren't reasons enough?" she muttered under her breath.

John hid a smile.

Oliver pointedly ignored her while Fyers piped in. "I'm betting once the Triad heard of her hatred of you, they probably recruited her to their side."

"But Helena's untrained," John pointed out. "She was being groomed as the strategic heir — she didn't have anything to do with enforcement. She couldn't hit a Coke can two inches in front of her, much less a critical area on your body while on a moving vehicle. Why did they send her?"

"Clearly they don't want me dead yet," Oliver said. "I think they're getting bolder in trying to out me as a Bratva captain. Speaking of which, did we clear up the evidence?"

"Yes," John answered. "We phoned our cleanup team, and they got it all before anyone could raise suspicion. And Felicity wiped all the surveillance footage."

"And there were no witnesses?" Oliver inquired skeptically. "On a public street?"

"Surprisingly none, aside from the crazy homeless people, and they're not going to have much credibility with anyone," John replied.

Oliver nodded. "I think we've got enough evidence at this point to prove that the Triad is behind these attacks." Then his eyes darkened. "I'll take it to Moscow tonight. In all likelihood they will give us the go order to begin counterattacks. When they do, I want us to attack _immediately_."

Fyers, Gold and Ivo all smiled, identical expressions of pure malice that made Felicity shiver in fear.

"We're ready," Gold nodded. "No prep time."

"Very well. You're dismissed, but have your phones on you."

The _boevik_ stood from their chairs and nodded to Oliver respectfully before exiting his room. John and Felicity remained.

"Moscow's going to call 9 p.m. local time," John told him.

"I know," Oliver answered.

"War against the Triad isn't the only thing Anatoly's going to want to talk about."

"I know that too."

Felicity watched the exchange curiously. John's voice sounded like a warning, while Oliver's sounded resigned. Oliver looked resigned, too — his eyes were closed and his hand was pressed over them, like he was trying to block out all light that could possibly seep in.

"Very well. I have some things I have to take care of. I'll be back in time for your call with Moscow."

Then John left the room. It was just Felicity and Oliver.

It was silent, but it wasn't uncomfortable. He still had his eyes closed, which gave Felicity plenty of time to stare at him and wonder. The first night he introduced her to his double life, he'd been ready and raring to wage war with the Triad, but today, on the eve of the first retaliation, he looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.

She wondered when it all changed.

"OK, it's time to change your dressings," she announced. She got up from her seat and grabbed some gauze and tape on the bedside table.

Oliver grunted as he sat up a little in his bed and took off his shirt. And Felicity had to stop herself from drooling at the sight.

It wasn't the first time she'd seen his naked torso, but the first time was when she and John were removing a bullet from his shoulder and she was far too panicked to notice anything else. Once he was out of immediate danger and she was sitting vigil at his bedside, waiting for him to come to, she got the chance to appreciate it.

His body was a work of art. There was no other way to put it. His body was in perfect proportion, from his broad shoulders to his tapered waist. From the defined muscles in his abdomen to the scars and tattoos on his skin.

Felicity shook herself out of her musings and stepped forward to gently remove the bloodstained bandage covering his new wound. The stitches were healing nicely, but every few hours she had to change his dressings by applying a salve and a new bandage.

And you could twist her arm until it popped out of her socket, but there was no way in the world she was going to admit that it was the best part of her day.

"You were uncharacteristically quiet during the last part of that meeting," Oliver observed as she peeled away the tape.

Felicity remained quiet as she worked. She didn't know where he was going with this.

"You disagree with going to war with the Triad," he said.

She twisted her lips at the declaratory way he made the statement. Like it was a statement of fact.

And it was, but it was starting to get a little troublesome that he could read her so easily.

"I never said that."

"You didn't have to."

She bit down on her lip, careful to keep her eyes on the wound she was dressing and not on Oliver's penetrating stare.

"I actually wanted to go to war with them long before this," he said. "I wanted to kill all of them after we found Devastators in my father's chest."

Felicity couldn't help herself. She glanced over at Oliver's face and saw an expression of pure, unmasked pain.

"Why didn't you?" she asked quietly.

He sighed and closed his eyes, but the anguish was still written in every line on his face. "Anatoly told me we weren't in the position to wage war yet. We didn't have the money, we didn't have the funds or the resources. He said the Bratva was in a precarious position and a war would wipe us out. He wanted us to have a stronger position before we struck."

She thought back to Robert Queen's murder. He was killed five years ago, and by then she'd already been forced into working for the FBI. The Pacific Northwest branch of the Bratva was hardly even a blip on their radar — she knew they existed, sure, but their reach wasn't nearly as far as it was now. Their organization was much smaller: mostly illegal arms trading and gambling.

But since then, they'd expanded their operations to include drug and human trafficking. The growth was only possible after the Bratva had taken over control of the SCPD and all the local politicians. The city was so firmly in the Bratva's pocket that it was impossible to so much as open up a hot dog stand without having to go through them first.

"So you had to wait," Felicity murmured as she fixed the dressing to his chest.

Oliver closed his eyes and sighed, sinking into his pillows. "I did," he nodded. "I did everything I could to build up the Bratva's influence until I knew we could single handedly wipe out the Triad for good."

She didn't say anything for a beat. The startling acceleration of the Bratva's influence in Starling City was what put them on the FBI priority list. Waller wanted to take them down, so she redirected as many resources to the cause as possible. Two years ago she made Lyla the point woman on all things Bratva. Then a year after that, she planted John to become counselor to the new captain, Oliver Queen.

Then most recently she assigned Felicity to go undercover to gather information and become a personal confidante to Oliver Queen, in a way John was unable to do.

She finished applying the tape to his dressing. Then her eye slid to the side, finding his Bratva tattoo emblazoned on his chest. Before she could stop herself, her fingers started tracing the outline of the intricate star. She held her breath as her fingertips moved over it, the warmth of his skin radiating through her at the light touch.

"Do you regret it?" she whispered.

Felicity looked up to wait for his response. She saw a thousand different emotions flicker across his face at once. She saw conflict, sadness, anger, bitterness all at once.

It was how she knew that the next words out of his mouth were a lie.

"No. No, I don't."


	8. Chapter 8

**Phase Three**

Oliver spotted her the minute he walked into the restaurant.

She was sitting in a corner booth, far away from the window, and crouched over the menu with a hat covering her eyes, like she was trying to keep as far away from scrutiny as possible.

With a grin, he strode past the hostess offering him a greeting and walked up to where she sat.

"Heya, Speedy," he greeted.

Thea looked up from the menu and the sweetest smile spread over her face the minute she saw her brother. With a soft squeal, she stood up and threw her arms around his shoulders.

"Ollie," she sighed in contentment. She squeezed him tightly and his arms automatically went to wrap around her waist.

When they finally released each other, Thea went back to the booth while Oliver took up the seat across from her.

"So how are you doing, little sis?" he asked. "How's Central City University treating you? You haven't been partying too hard, have you?"

She rolled her eyes playfully at his question. "College is all about partying, Ollie. You should know, you got kicked out of four of them because of it."

He grimaced at her. "I notice you're still in college though, so I imagine you're doing at least a little bit of studying?"

She shrugged, as if she were trying to be nonchalant about it. "Yeah, I suppose. I've already got all my classes lined up for next semester. That is, if I pass my finals."

He smiled. Even though she wouldn't admit it, Oliver knew Thea loved college, and not just for the social scene it provided — she actually enjoyed the subjects she was studying (fashion merchandising and business), and she had ambitions to use her education once she graduated. It was a far cry from the directionless wild child she was in high school.

"You will pass," he reassured her. "If you want, I can help you find a tutor."

"It may come to that. Anyway, whether I pass finals or not, I've decided that I'm going to spend the summer in Barcelona with my suitemates. I could use the sun. Oh, remember the paella we had at that little hole-in-the-wall place Dad took us to when I was nine? I still have dreams about it."

"Yeah, I remember."

Thea's smile turned a little sad and wistful as she turned her gaze out to the window. "It's coming up on that anniversary, you know. It'll be five years in May."

He nodded, looking down at the sticky table in front of him. Five years. Five long years without his father. It felt more like decades, because in those five years Oliver felt like he'd aged by at least fifty years.

"So anyway," Thea shook her head, as if sweeping away the melancholy thoughts. "How's Mom? How's she enjoying Sweden?"

After Moira was shot at the benefit, Oliver sent her to Sweden to recover. The facilities there were far more comfortable and asked no questions, so she'd be able to do her physical therapy in peace. Sending her to Sweden also had the added benefit of keeping her as far away from the conflict at home as possible, since the Triad didn't have any associates in Scandinavia.

"She says it's far too cold for her liking," Oliver answered with a tight smile. "She told me her entire spring wardrobe is obsolete."

Thea giggled. "Maybe before I go to Barcelona, I'll swing by and hang with her for a week. She's got to be bored out of her mind up there. No one to boss around."

He laughed at that. "Yeah, she's trying her hardest to hold some sway here."

The waitress came by and took their drink and food orders. Once she had them, she took their menus and left them once again.

"So listen, Speedy," Oliver began, inwardly bracing himself for the reason he brought her here in the first place. "I'm going to have to up your protection for the foreseeable future."

She raised a delicate eyebrow at him. "Oh?"

"I don't want to tell you too much, but we've started waging war," he murmured in a low voice. "It's been a few weeks now, but the conflict is going to escalate soon. We're sure of it. That's why I sent Mom to Sweden and that's why I'm going to add more security to your detail."

"Do you really think they're going to try and get me in Central City?" she asked with a skeptical expression.

"I don't want to take any chances," he answered darkly. "Once the semester is over, we'll set up a safe house for you and your suitemates in Barcelona, but if your travel plans change I'll need to know at _least_ a week in advance. At the very latest."

Thea bit down on her lip as she examined her older brother's expression.

"Ollie," she began slowly, "do you think this is a good idea?"

"Do I think what is a good idea?"

"Waging war with the Triad? I mean, I know they're the bad guys, but — "

"Thea, they killed Dad," he growled. "They've killed countless other people. They shot at Mom. They shot at _me_."

"I know," she interrupted him. "Look, I know all of that. Don't you remember how angry I was after Dad died? God, I was just fourteen, but I wanted to go out and find the bastards and kill them myself."

Oliver's jaw tightened as he watched his sister fidget in front of him.

"It's just...ever since Dad died and you took over the...the family business, you've turned into someone that I hardly recognize. You're so willing to get revenge that you'll stop at nothing."

"What are you saying, Thea?"

"I'm saying...look, I get it. I know that this isn't a happy-go-lucky kind of business and I know that Dad wanted me to stay as far away from it as possible and so do you, and I'm trying. Really, I am. But I still hear things. I hear about...about stuff that's going on."

She paused for a moment while he quirked an eyebrow up at her. Then she sucked in a deep breath.

"I've heard about the Vertigo, Ollie."

His fists clenched under the table the minute the word slipped from her mouth.

A week after Helena shot him, Anatoly declared war but not before he handed down the official mandate. The Bratva started pushing Vertigo; Starling City was the test balloon. They were seeing how well the drug did in their city before they started opening their lines of distribution.

Vertigo had been on the streets for about a month now and they were raking in the dough. It was helping fund the war against the Triad: the dirty money paid for weapons and information and soon Triad bodies were dropping in far greater numbers than Bratva ones.

But so were civilian bodies. The SCPD had kept quiet about the number of Vertigo overdoses thanks to the Brava's stranglehold on the department, but soon enough the state was going to notice. And after that, it was only a matter of time before the feds came raining down on them.

"I've got it handled, Thea," Oliver finally bit out.

Her brows wrinkled in a suddenly furious expression.

"That's bullshit," she declared, her arms crossed over her chest. "You do _not_ have it handled. You've crossed a _line_ this time. It was one thing when it was marijuana or cocaine, but now you've started dealing in synthetics! God, just think what Dad would say if he were here right now!"

"Yeah, well he's not," Oliver growled. "He's not here. If he were, I wouldn't be in this position. You wouldn't be in this position. _None_ of us would be in this position. What am I supposed to do, Thea? I swore that I was going to take these guys down and if this is what I need to do, then — "

"That's what I'm saying!" she hissed. "That's what I'm trying to point out! You've been hellbent on revenge and I _get it_ , but at what cost? You want to take down the Triad so bad that you're willing to let innocent people die along the way!"

The two Queen siblings sat in that corner booth, glaring at each other just as the waitress brought by their food. Once she left, Oliver finally broke eye contact with his sister and turned his glare to the piping hot burger in front of him.

She was right, of course. Oliver spent the entire first part of his life running away from these responsibilities while his father was alive. He didn't want to have anything to do with the family business and his father actively encouraged that. Robert wanted Oliver to run as far away from this life as he could.

But the minute the Triad shot Robert, Oliver didn't have any choice.

"I don't know what to do, Thea," he answered quietly. "This is what I've been working toward for five years. Five long years. If I quit now, it will all have been for nothing and Dad's killers will still be on the loose."

The young woman huffed as she settled back into the booth. "To tell you the truth, Ollie, I don't know what you should do either."

That brought a wry grin to his face, one that she returned. Then he let out an exhausted sigh.

"I didn't say this earlier, but you look like shit, big brother," Thea said plainly. "Have you been sleeping at all?"

"No, not really," he said as he chomped on a fry. "Too much has been going on, and that's including at QC. We're trying to expand the Applied Sciences division, and the amount of red tape we have to navigate…" he shook his head. "It's a nightmare. Felicity hasn't stopped scolding me ever since Dr. Snow took me off bed rest."

Thea's eyebrows shot up her forehead as she chewed. "Who's Felicity?"

"My new EA," he answered. "She's a good person. You'll like her."

His little sister's eyes suddenly took on a scrutinizing expression that reminded him way too much of their mother. "And do _you_ like her?"

"Of course I like her. She's my EA."

"No, I mean _like_ like her."

Oliver rolled his eyes. "What is this, the third grade?"

"You know what I mean. You were talking about her like...well, I don't know because you don't have a lot of history to compare it to, but the way you said her name just now makes it sound like there might be something going on between the two of you."

"There is nothing going on between the two of us," Oliver said firmly.

"OK, but are you lying?"

"Thea!"

She held up her hands in surrender. "Fine, fine. I'll drop it."

"Thank you," he said pointedly as he returned to his food.

"Besides, I'll get to meet her tonight anyway."

He groaned as he buried his face in his hands.

* * *

Outside of long breaks, Thea only ever came home once or twice during the semester. And when she did, Raisa liked to construct huge feasts of all of Thea's favorite foods. Which was exactly what the woman was doing when Oliver walked into the kitchen that evening.

"Mr. Oliver," she greeted with a smile. She was currently hunched over a bowl of what looked like mac and cheese, which was Thea's favorite comfort food whenever she was sick.

The man himself grinned at his beloved housekeeper and pecked her on the cheek. "Good evening, Raisa. I just came here to get a bottle of water."

He walked to the small refrigerator and grabbed what he came for. Then he turned back to his housekeeper.

"By the way, do you know where Felicity is?" he asked her.

She nodded. "She was getting so tired of being cooped up in the house, so I sent her to the market for flour and eggs."

The bottle in Oliver's hand stilled halfway to his mouth. "Did she go by herself?"

"No. Mr. John insisted on going with her."

A wave of relief flooded through him. The thought of Felicity going out on her own during such a turbulent time was enough to send shockwaves of panic through him.

The Bratva officially declared war just four weeks ago, but in that short month, bodies had been dropping on both sides. He'd already lost six footmen, and Sin was still in recovery after she got shanked in a fight down by the docks. If Felicity ventured out by herself, she was sure to get hurt.

Raisa had been watching his expressions very closely. It made Oliver squirm underneath her scrutinizing gaze.

"Miss Felicity is a lovely girl," she said slowly. "She reminds me so much of a sunbeam."

Oliver took a sip of his water, waiting for his housekeeper to make the point she seemed to be building up to.

"Sunbeams shine light into the darkness and bring happiness to us. But we cannot hold onto sunbeams. We cannot trap them. We cannot keep them for ourselves. They must bring light to others, otherwise they cease to exist."

He sighed. "What are you saying, Raisa?" he asked quietly.

"I'm saying Miss Felicity is like sunbeam. Just like you used to be. You used to be sunbeam when you were younger."

Yeah, Oliver thought wryly to himself. A drunken player of a sunbeam. But this conversation was starting to get far too real for his comfort, so it was time for him to get away.

"Thanks, Raisa," he said, but not before wrapping a warm hand around her forearm. Then he walked out of the kitchen.

It was still a few more hours until dinner and he didn't have anything to do. Thea had gone shopping (because apparently the boutiques in Central City were too frilly for her liking), and there was nothing pressing that he needed to immediately take care of.

So he decided to wander out to the gym, which was in a huge room on the other side of the olympic-sized indoor swimming pool.

Physical exertion was what he needed, he thought to himself. A few minutes on the treadmill would be good for him, to help him work through the things Thea and Raisa both said.

Taking off his shirt and donning a pair of gym shorts and tennis shoes, he got on the treadmill and took a few warm up laps. Then he ramped up the speed and started running, working through the initial burn in his calves the and struggle for air until he settled into a nice, easy rhythm.

Now that his body was occupied, his mind started wandering down other avenues. He thought of what Raisa meant, about Felicity being a sunbeam, about how she shined light into darkness.

Quite honestly, that was the most perfect descriptor he'd ever heard for the tiny blonde. She could figuratively and literally light up a room with her smile alone. There were times when she would smile at him and he had to look away, lest she blinded him.

The truth of the matter was, he'd known her for six weeks. _Six weeks_. And in the span of that month and a half, he'd found himself completely dependent on Felicity Smoak. Both in QC matters and Bratva matters, he'd catch himself watching her out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge her reaction on her open face. And what was even more perplexing, he tried as often as possible to do what he thought she wanted him to do.

When he didn't, he spent a considerable amount of the day walking around with a huge pit in his stomach, which did nothing for the ulcer he was almost certain he was developing.

The more he thought about it, actually, the more terrifying it was. The fact that she held so much sway over what he did, even when she said nothing, was dangerous. It was dangerous for her, it was dangerous for him and it was dangerous for the hundreds of other Bratva associates under his command. He had to think clearly and rationally when he made these decisions and it was so damn hard to think rationally when she was near him. For fuck's sake, it was difficult just _breathing_ in her presence sometimes.

He tried to think when exactly it started, this insane dependence and awareness of her. If he was being honest, he'd always been aware of her, even in the early days. He'd track her out of the corner of his eye at QC, as she moved around her little space in front of the glass walls of his office, noticing when she would shake her shoulders and dance to whatever song she was listening to through her headphones.

But this desire to please her...it must have come from that week when she ignored him. The week of hell that only ended with her pulling a bullet out of his chest.

God what a horrible week it had been. He shuddered as he ran on the treadmill, though his body was dripping with sweat. The steely glare her eyes took on every time she looked at him...the distant way she held herself...the cold politeness her voice took on every time she addressed him.

He knew he had overreacted. He knew it the minute he started yelling at her. But God he couldn't help it. He'd never felt such panic in his life as he watched her disobey his orders and crouch in front of a tangle of wires, waiting on bated breath as each second ticked closer and closer to his demise. There weren't strong enough words to describe how it felt, knowing that he might have to watch her die in front of him, seconds before the explosion took him with it.

He nearly lost her that day.

The thought made Oliver stumble on the treadmill and his arms grabbed on to the rails so he could jump off the belt and pause for a second.

His breath escaped him in short, quick huffs, both from how fast he'd been going and also from the memory.

"Shit," he breathed.

Just as he was about to get back on the belt, he heard the door open behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Felicity poking her head through, like she was wary of coming inside.

"Oliver?" she called out tentatively.

A smile started to creep across his face in spite of himself. "You can come in, Felicity. I'm not going to bite."

She gave a weak smile as she pulled away from the door and stepped slowly into the room. "Hi. Um, Raisa wanted me to tell you that dinner is ready."

"OK." He turned back to the treadmill and turned it off before hopping off and grabbing the towel he'd hung on the rails. "Tell them I'll be right there."

She nodded and her head disappeared from the doorway. With a sigh, Oliver patted down his chest with his towel and went into the shower to quickly wash off all the sweat.

He walked into the dining room fifteen minutes later to find Thea and Felicity sitting at the table, talking a million miles a minute in the way only young women who'd formed a quick bond could do. Thea's eyes were lit up by the smile on her face and she was laughing at something Felicity had said.

The sight shocked Oliver because truth be told, he hadn't seen her smile like that since before their father died. He was almost terrified that he'd lost that smile forever, but there it was, lighting up her face like it had never disappeared in the first place.

Looking at it made his heart feel like a balloon inside of his chest, swelling and swelling until he just felt lighter, like he could float away at any moment. And he had no idea how much he missed his sister's carefree smile until he realized it had been missing in the first place.

Unable to help himself, a smile of his own spread across his mouth as he took his seat at the head of the table. "What are you guys talking about?" he asked.

"Oh, Ollie!" Thea beamed and there was that feeling again. "I was just telling Felicity here about that time you made me to eat dirt when we were little kids."

Felicity giggled and Oliver's balloon light heart did a somersault in his chest at the sound.

"First of all, I did not _make_ you eat dirt," he said in a mock annoyed tone. "Trying to make you do anything when you were a little kid was like trying to push a boulder up hill."

"Then what would you call it?" Thea challenged.

"I _dared_ you to eat dirt," he answered. "There's a big difference."

Felicity burst into full laughter, and Oliver couldn't help but watch in amazement at the sight. He'd never heard his assistant laugh like this at anything, and he mostly thought it was because she never felt comfortable enough in his presence to laugh like this.

Watching her sparkle made his mouth go dry and his palms sweaty.

"I'm sure you got him back a few times on your own though, right?" she asked Thea as her giggles finally died down.

"Not as much as she would have liked," Oliver said smugly. "I was always one step ahead of her."

Thea rolled her eyes at that, but the smile on her face belied her annoyance.

Felicity snickered, and her smile was almost a little wistful. "It must have been fun, though. I always wanted a sibling."

"You're an only child?" Thea asked with her head cocked to the side.

She nodded. "My mom was a single mother working as a cocktail waitress in Vegas. I'm her only child. I remember asking for a sibling one year for Hanukkah, and ended up getting a lecture on the birds and bees instead. I think she was trying to put me off of wanting a sibling or a baby of my own at a young age, and let me tell you, it worked."

Thea blinked in surprised for a full five seconds before bursting out into laughter, and a few moments later, Felicity joined her.

Oliver chuckled, but his mirth wasn't as free as his sister's. Barring that time at the hospital fundraiser when she let a personal detail about her mother slip, it was the most she'd ever talked about her childhood.

He thought back to his own childhood as his sister and his assistant gabbed and Raisa served dinner. Oliver had been far too self-involved to understand he was going to have a little sister when his mother told him she was pregnant, and once Thea was old enough to start following him around everywhere, he was more annoyed than indifferent. Hence the eating dirt incident.

Eventually he got used to her presence, and by then he grudgingly enjoyed having her around. It made his childhood less lonely, and knowing that he had a kid sister who looked up to him stopped him from doing a _lot_ of stupid shit. (He still did stupid shit, but it could have been a whole lot worse.)

Hearing Felicity talk about wanting a sibling made him wonder again about what her childhood would have been like. With a single mother who seemed to work a lot and a father who wasn't in the picture for reasons he didn't quite know, she must have been lonely as a child. Forced to grow up and bear responsibilities that children shouldn't have had to deal with…

He wanted to know more, but by the time he tuned back into their conversation, they had wandered far off the topic of lonely childhoods to much girlier things that he had no interest in.

But while Oliver tuned out their chatter, he watched the two of them interact. As he'd predicted, Felicity and Thea got along really well. His assistant would laugh with delight whenever his sister would regale her with stories about the Queen siblings and their childhoods.

Thea was just wrapping up a particularly embarrassing story about the time Oliver discovered Axe Body Spray and Thea had discovered at the same time that she was allergic to it when Digg walked into the living room. He greeted the two ladies with a slight nod of the head before dipping down to whisper in Oliver's ear.

"We've got a situation," he murmured. "We need you immediately."

Oliver's face immediately dropped his mirthful expression and nodded. "Meet me in the office."

Digg returned the nod and left the dining room. Then Oliver turned to his dining companions. "Something's come up and I'm afraid I have to bow out of dinner early. If you'll excuse me."

In seconds he was out of his chair and following Digg down the hallway to the office. Fyers and Gold were already waiting for him there, sitting in the armchairs in front of the fireplace.

"What's going on?" Oliver asked, closing the door firmly behind him.

"For the past week, someone's been attacking our supply ships of Vertigo," Fyers answered. "The drugs aren't getting out to our dealers."

Oliver's jaw clenched. "For the past _week_?" he demanded. "How the hell has this been going on for a _week_?"

Fyers grimaced while Gold shifted a little in his seat.

"When the first few incidents happened, we thought it was just the Triad getting lucky by cutting off our supplies," Gold reluctantly replied.

"How do we know it's _not_ the Triad?" Oliver bit out.

"If it were the Triad, they'd be trying to profit off of it," Digg said quietly. "But as far as we know, they haven't been selling any Vertigo and the people strung out on the drug are getting more and more desperate for it."

"So then who is it?" Oliver shouted. "Who the hell has been cutting off our Vertigo supplies?"

Fyers and Gold glanced at one another, before turning back to Oliver.

"We think it's the feds," Fyers murmured.

Oliver glared at the two men standing before him. "How the hell would the feds know anything about this? This is a new drug, it's barely been on the streets for a month."

"That's the thing," Gold interrupted. "This drug is so _new_ that it's not even illegal yet. Most synthetics take at least five years before police even start to notice the pattern and then two more years before the government can catch up and outlaw the ingredients."

"So your explanation doesn't make any sense. It takes years for the government to do anything, so why are the on us now?"

"Because I'm pretty sure we have a mole in the organization," Fyers growled.

Oliver's spine stiffened and a shiver ran through his entire body at Fyer's proclamation.

A mole.

A traitor.

The air in the room hung heavy with the declaration of an informant among them. Even Digg seemed to be holding his breath.

"That's a dangerous accusation to be making, Fyers." Oliver's voice was low and gravely, as he glared at his gruff _boevik_.

But the man didn't back down. "I know," he shot back. "Which is why we need to be investigating everyone, immediately. We're in the middle of a war with the Triad, we can't afford to have leaks in our organization!"

Oliver growled. There were few things he hated more in this world than Fyers, but Fyers being right was one of them.

"Fine," he bit out. "I'll look into it. Now leave."

Fyers gave one last scowl before stalking out of the office, Gold following close behind him.

Once they were gone, Digg closed the door, leaving just him and Oliver alone. The Bratva captain turned to his trusted adviser.

"What do you think?" he asked.

Digg didn't say anything for a brief pause. Oliver waited on baited breath for the man to answer.

"It's too much to be a coincidence," he finally answered. "I think they're right. I think there's a mole."

Oliver turned away in frustration.

"God fucking _damn it_!" he shouted.

This was the last thing he could afford at the moment. They were at war with the Triad, they needed the money from Vertigo to continue funding it, and the FBI was on their tail. All because there was a traitor in the organization.

He hated feeling so helpless.

With an angry huff, he rubbed his hands over his tired face, then turned back to his number two. This couldn't stand. This situation had to be contained, and contained immediately.

"What do we do now?" Digg asked quietly.

"We take stock of everyone working for us, and determine the likeliest associates to be moles," Oliver bit out. "Then we smoke them out."


	9. Chapter 9

The next day at QC was one of the hardest Oliver had ever endured. He hadn't gotten any sleep the night before, and his brain was supposed to be on QC business, but he found it often wandering far away from QC business, instead dwelling on Bratva business.

By the time he returned from the investor's luncheon, he was exhausted. And it was only one o'clock.

Felicity walked into his office a few minutes after he got back. Without looking up, he said, "Go ahead and leave the coffee with the TIF forms. Thanks, Felicity."

"No."

That defiant tone sure caught his attention. He looked up in surprise and saw his assistant staring at him with a mix of worry and determination in her eyes. She was also empty-handed.

"Excuse me?" he asked incredulously.

She shook her head. "I didn't bring you your coffee this afternoon because you are going to take a nap."

He raised his eyebrows at her. "Who are you, my kindergarten teacher?"

"You didn't get any sleep last night, and I can tell because the bags under your eyes are grayer than usual. Not to mention, you mistook Jonathan from accounting for Michelle in HR. You even congratulated him on his pregnancy."

Oliver winced. "I did?"

She nodded. "I had to reassure him that he hadn't gained an odd amount of weight since the last time you saw him."

He sighed and pressed a hand to his face. "Look, you're right, I didn't get any sleep last night. But I can't just take a nap. I'm the CEO of a multibillion dollar corporation, and this is a regular American work day."

"The fact that you're the CEO of a multibillion dollar corporation means you can generally do whatever the hell you want."

"But — "

"I cleared your schedule for the rest of the afternoon," Felicity cut him off. "I also got an extension on the deadline for those TIF forms."

That caused Oliver's eyebrows to quirk upward. "How'd you pull that off?"

She shrugged. "Pulled a few strings at city hall. Don't worry," she insisted when he made a face, "I didn't pull any...underground strings. Everything was completely above ground."

The fact that Felicity was getting fluent enough in his duplicitous lifestyle was both thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

Oliver let out another sigh when he realized he'd run out of excuses. "How much time do I have?"

"I carved out two hours for you," she answered. She ducked out of his office for a second, then returned with a blanket and a small pillow. "I can take care of everything else you're supposed to be working on."

"You'll make sure the finance reports have been proofread and signed?" he asked as she handed him the pillow.

"Yes," she said soothingly. "I'll even use proper grammar and everything."

He made a face at her. "Not funny."

She giggled, and God help him, but the sound made his heart flutter a little in his chest. "The world won't completely end if you take a two-hour nap, Oliver," she told him. Then she whipped open the blanket and draped it over his shoulders.

"You deserve a break every now and then," she told him, her beautiful blue eyes boring into his.

He felt like he was rooted to the spot as she stared at him. She had that effect on him: she could make him feel like the entire world had stopped, and he wouldn't even care.

"Thank you, Felicity," he murmured.

"You're welcome," she answered. Then, with one last smile sent his way, she turned and exited his office.

With a sigh, he looked down at the pillow on his desk. God, he was so tired. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept a full eight hours. It must have been at least several years since.

He took the pillow and blanket and pushed his office chair away to make a clear space behind his massive desk. Then he shrugged off his jacket, loosened his tie and stretched over the floor.

What happened next was kind of a blur. One minute his eyes were closed and the next minute he found himself sitting in a chair in a darkened room with a single, solitary lamp hanging overhead that shined a dim beam of light over him.

In addition to all of this, he noticed that he wasn't so much as sitting in the chair as much as he was tied to it.

He struggled for a few minutes against the ropes tied around his chest, binding him to his seat. He also struggled against the panic that was welling up inside of him. Where was he? What was going on? Where was Thea? Where was his mother? Were they safe? Were they still alive?

What about Felicity? Was she still alive?

The thought of his tiny blonde assistant trapped somewhere in a similar situation ratcheted up his panic levels and he struggled even harder. He wanted to scream, but that was when he realized his mouth was taped shut.

He struggled for what seemed like an eternity, and finally someone emerged from the shadows. Oliver paused in his fight to free himself as he stared in horror at Sebastian Blood, a menacing glint in his smile.

"Ah, Oliver," he crooned, sauntering closer with his hands clasped behind his back. "The great Oliver Queen."

He growled under his duct tape gag.

Sebastian smirked, then he lifted his hand and snapped. Seconds later, two masked men dressed from head to toe in black dragged in a kicking and screaming Felicity by her elbows.

Oliver's heart dropped at the sight of her being held captive. She wore a blue dress that was torn at the hem, scratches and gashes all up her legs. Her blonde hair was a tangled mess, smudges of dirt and grease all along her jawline. Even her eyes, her gorgeous blue eyes were red and puffy, and filled with fear.

But it was nothing compared to the fear inside of him.

He struggled even harder against his restraints, trying to use all his might to break through the rounds of rope tied around his chest. He had to get to Felicity. He had to help her, to free her.

"My operatives tell me that you have fallen quite hard for your assistant," Sebastian said, walking toward where his guards held Felicity. She still struggled against their arms, but with an almost resigned air now.

"Quite a lovely girl," the man continued.

He smiled at Felicity, then lifted his hand to run the back of his knuckle down her face. She flinched away at his touch and Oliver jerked forward, growling underneath his gag.

"I can hardly blame you, Oliver," Sebastian said conversationally. "I've always had a thing for brunettes myself, but your Felicity is enough to make me turn."

He wanted nothing more in that instant to break free of these ropes and throw his fists into Sebastian's face, over and over again, feeling with a gross sense of pleasure how his skull would crumble under his hands, how the blood would squirt out of his nose and eyes, how his body would go limp underneath him. He never killed for pleasure, but he could make an exception for this disgusting piece of shit disguised as a human being.

Sebastian must have sensed Oliver's rage, because his awful smile only widened. He pulled away from Felicity and walked toward where Oliver was seated. He crouched slightly, leaning forward until he was eye level.

"You want to kill me, don't you?" Sebastian taunted. "You want to literally take my life away from me with your own bare hands."

Yes, Oliver thought with menacing glee. Yes, he did.

"Don't do it, Oliver!" Felicity shouted desperately. "Oliver!"

"OLIVER!"

In a sudden, jerking movement his eyes snapped open, and he found himself sitting on the ground with a heavy blanket on his lap and his hands wrapped around something small and warm.

He blinked his eyes a couple of times to adjust them, and he suddenly he was in his office. Felicity wasn't in danger — in fact, she was the heavy blanket on his lap, staring up at him with confused and worried eyes.

"Oliver?" she murmured tentatively. "Are you OK?"

He sucked in a deep breath, letting the oxygen fill his lungs. It gave him time to contemplate the answer to her question.

"Yeah," he finally rasped. Of its own volition, the hand that was wrapped around her wrist squeezed a little. Almost like he was trying to find something to help steady himself. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Despite his declaration, Felicity didn't move. She stayed stone still as he took in breath after breath, trying to pull himself from his horrible dream and reorient himself back in the waking world. He wasn't being held captive, he reminded himself. Sebastian Blood was nowhere to be seen.

Most importantly, Felicity was safe and sound. He could feel her warm and reassuring weight on his lap, and he squeezed his fingers over the pulse in her wrist just to make sure.

With slow, deliberate movements, she moved her free hand to cup his face. "Oliver," she breathed, her blue eyes swimming in concern, "What's wrong? What happened?"

Her touch unhinged something in him. Maybe it was just the remnants of the terror he felt, seeing her disheveled form at the mercy of someone as despicable as Sebastian Blood. Maybe it was the way her voice caressed his name. Or maybe it had been there ever since he met her and he just now acted on an impulse.

He couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was. All he knew for sure was that there was something inside of him that urged him to reach up and wrapped his other hand around her other wrist, holding her hand to his face. As his breaths slowed and his pulse calmed down, he felt himself drowning in the depths of her blue eyes as they stared him down.

He couldn't bring himself to look away.

"Felicity."

Her name was barely more than a murmur on her lips, but it was enough to cast a spell between them. Their faces were just centimeters apart. Oliver could feel her breath ghosting across his face.

Then he saw her eyes dip for a microsecond to his mouth and that was all it took. He closed the distance between them and took her lips with his.

Her shock was evident in the heartbeat she froze after their lips first made contact. Oh God, he thought in that prolonged moment. He'd made a monumental mistake. A huge, gigantic, colossal mistake.

But right when he was about to pull away, she leaned in, both of her hands reaching forward to cup his face and hold him closer to her. Those beautiful lips of hers started moving over his own and his mind went blissfully blank.

Oliver Queen had kissed many a woman in his lifetime, but never before had it felt like this.

The kiss was slow, but heated. They both took their time, getting to know each other's touch. He savored how she cradled his face in her hands, comforted by her warmth and proximity. His arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her closer to his chest, forcing her hands to move away from his face and around his neck.

Felicity was so soft and warm and sweet and pure. The scent of her, the taste of her, the touch of her…all of it united together inside of him until all he knew was her. He couldn't think of anything else. He didn't _want_ to think of anything else.

But just before he lost himself completely to her, the sharp, unwelcome ring of the office telephone shattered the spell cast over them.

Felicity stiffened in his arms before very slowly pulling away. Oliver opened his eyes to find her staring at him, her cheeks flushed and her eyes filled with wonder, confusion and another emotion he couldn't quite name.

"Um," she began. "I, um…"

Oliver remained frozen. All he could do was stare at her in shock, his mind still reeling from their kiss.

"I should...I should get that," she stammered. And with that, she shakily pulled herself up to her feet, straightened her skirt and walked out of his office to answer the call.

The minute she was gone, Oliver let out a breath, and rational thought once again returned.

The first coherent thought that crossed his mind was this: he was so monumentally screwed.

* * *

To say Anatoly was upset at the news of a mole was an understatement.

After almost a full minute of cursing in Russian, the mob boss on the other end of the line finally took a deep breath.

"What is your plan to fix this, Oliver?" the man demanded.

"We're going to find the mole," he answered. "I have already come up with a plan to smoke out the traitor."

"And you will take care of it, yes?"

The meaning behind his question was crystal clear.

It was one of the things Oliver's never really understood about the Bratva. As an organization, they were willing to do terrible things without batting an eyelash. Oliver himself had watched Anatoly literally snap a man's neck, the older man's face blank the entire time.

But when it came to actually talking about these things and calling it what it was — murder — they instead chose to call it something far more innocuous.

Instead it was "taking care of it."

"Yes," Oliver answered. "It will be taken care of."

Anatoly grumbled over the line. "Do it soon, Oliver. This is a clumsy mistake that makes me doubt your commitment to our organization."

The meaning behind that statement was also clear: get your men in line before I "take care" of you myself.

The line went dead a second later and Oliver reached forward to hang up the call.

Digg finally stirred from his stone frozen position. "So," he began. "What is your plan exactly? You do have one, right?"

He nodded as he stood from his chair to get to the drink cart. "We're going to meet all the boevik one by one," he began as he poured himself a drink. "We will tell them where the next shipment of Vertigo will be delivered, but we will each give them a different location. Then the location that gets raided will lead us to the mole."

"Are you sure it's one of the boevik? What if it's lower than that?"

"The FBI wouldn't be interested in taking in anyone lower than a boevik as an informant," Oliver said as he lifted his glass to his lips. He drained half the liquid in there with one sip. "Besides, a compromised associate is just a symptom. Once we identify the breach, we cut off the head and the rest of them die off."

"Do you mean to tell me," Digg began slowly, "that even if the boevik isn't the traitor, you will kill them instead of the traitor associate working under them?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Diggle," Oliver said grimly. "I'm going to kill them both."

"Oliver, you're going to kill an innocent boevik over this?" Digg demanded.

"No one is innocent in this organization," Oliver snapped. "We are all murderers."

Besides, it was no less than what Anatoly would do if he didn't take care of this situation soon.

With a grim look, Oliver polished off the rest of his vodka just as a soft knock sounded at the door.

"Come in," he called.

A second later the door slowly opened and Felicity poked her head through the small opening. Oliver's leapt into his throat at the sight of her, since he the minute he saw her he was reminded of the kiss from yesterday.

The incredible, beautiful, mind-numbing kiss.

If Felicity felt the same way, she didn't let on. Her face was one of professionality as she came in bearing a tray with a covered plate.

"Hi," she said quietly. "You weren't at dinner earlier, so I brought you some heated leftovers."

Oliver nodded and she placed the tray down on the corner of his desk. Then she looked up at him, then John who was standing by the fireplace, his arms crossed and his expression stony.

"What's going on?" she asked cautiously.

"Nothing," Oliver answered. "Thank you, Felicity."

Digg, who usually kept his emotions and opinions to himself, scowled at Oliver. Then he got to his feet and stormed past Felicity, leaving the mob boss alone with his assistant.

"That doesn't look like nothing," she commented, her head turned as she watched Diggle stomp away.

Oliver heaved a sigh before he collapsed into his chair, his hands over his face. God, he was tired, and it wasn't just physical. It was a bone deep exhaustion. It was mental and spiritual. He felt drained in every way.

There were times he just wanted to go to sleep and pray that he never woke up.

He heard the door close and assumed Felicity had left. But when his hands fell away and his eyes opened, he realized she was still there, standing on his side of the closed door, her head tilted and her eyes worried.

She didn't need to voice the question. It was right there, on her face.

"We have a mole in the organization," he answered. "Diggle objects to my method of finding out who it is."

A shadow crossed over her eyes, and her face shut down.

"You're going to kill them, aren't you?" she asked quietly.

Oliver looked away. It was one thing to receive criticism from Diggle. But he knew he couldn't handle her disappointment.

"I have to protect my organization," he said, his eyes boring holes into the carpet. "This is the only way I know how."

Felicity didn't say anything for a long time.

"Thank you for the food," he said, gesturing to the tray.

She nodded and turned on her heel to open the door. But before she walked through, she turned back around and said, "Oliver, I know that this is your organization and you have to protect it. I get that."

He looked up, and he saw her staring at her with pleading blue eyes. The sight was enough to bring him to his knees.

"But you're not the Bratva, Oliver. You're better than the Bratva. You're a good man."

She offered him a wobbly smile.

"Don't let the Bratva take away your humanity."


	10. Chapter 10

Throughout the next two days, Oliver spread the misinformation among his boevik. He met with each of them individually and told them where the next shipment of Vertigo would be on Thursday evening. Of course there were no new shipments of Vertigo on Thursday evening, but he instead would be watching by remote surveillance to see which location would get raided.

He hadn't talked to Felicity or Digg about it since, but they both seemed resigned to the eventuality. They didn't have a choice because Oliver didn't either.

One of his Boevik would die.

Thursday eventually rolled around, and after dinner was finished Oliver retired to his office. Digg arrived a few minutes later, along with Felicity, who was there to set up the surveillance feeds on his computer.

Digg hadn't said much to Oliver since he stormed out after their first disagreement, and Oliver hadn't forced the issue. He knew better than that. He also knew that eventually his counselor would come around. Digg was a reasonable and practical man. Despite his morals, he would eventually see it: this was the only way to maintain the integrity of the organization.

Oliver was standing in front of his drink cart, pensively sipping on his vodka while Felicity sat in his office chair, fiddling around with stuff on his computer.

And speaking of not saying much, he and Felicity had barely said two words to one another since that night. While part of it was probably the mole thing, Oliver was certain that a much larger part of it was because of the kiss.

The damn kiss. The damn perfect, beautiful kiss that he couldn't stop thinking about.

They seemed to have come to an unspoken agreement to completely ignore it and pretend it never happened, which was fine. To a degree.

The real problem was that even if they weren't talking about it, he was thinking about it. All the time. Even during what little sleep he could get, he was dreaming about the way her lips moved over his, how warm she felt to his touch. He was imagining what would have happened if the phone hadn't rang. How far would they have taken it? How far would she have _let_ him take it?

God, he wanted to kiss her again.

"Done," Felicity announced.

Her voice pulled him from his musings. Mentally preparing himself, he pulled away from the drink cart and stood behind the chair Felicity sat in. He trained his eyes on the screens in front.

"Any minute now," he muttered to himself.

He had scheduled several trucks delivering nothing but cotton balls to arrive at the five different locations he mentioned to his boevik. One by one the trucks arrived, and one by one the associates guarding the trucks came forward to unload the contents.

Then, suddenly, two associates in the bottom left surveillance screen went down. The other associates started firing someone who hadn't moved into the camera's frame yet, but after a few more seconds, a group of five plainclothes officers pressed forward.

They subdued all the associates present, either by shooting or by knocking them out. Oliver counted three unconscious and two more pushed down on the ground.

"Ninth and Mercer," Felicity said quietly. "Who did you give Ninth and Mercer?"

Oliver's jaw tightened. "Ivo."

He really should have known, he thought to himself. Ivo had always been skeptical of Oliver's rise to captaincy within the Bratva. Ivo was the one to second guess every one of Oliver's decisions. If it weren't for Anatoly, Ivo would have eagerly stepped forward and slit Oliver's throat in a second.

Well, now it was time to end it.

"Call him," he barked at Digg. "I want him here in half an hour. Have the guards bring him to the conversation room."

With that, he stalked out of his office. His jaw set and his anger simmering just below the surface, he made his way to the basement, but instead of veering into the hospital wing they kept, he turned left and opened a heavy, reinforced steel door that led into a dimly lit hallway. He swiftly made his way down until he reached the last door at the end of the hall.

Oliver didn't quite know where the name "conversation room" came from. It had been called that since as far as he could remember. Maybe to cover up the true purpose of the room, because what happened in it could barely be called "conversations."

Much like the hallway outside, the room itself was dark and dank. The only light was a flickering bulb in the corner of the room, casting an eerie glow.

The room was also sparse. The only thing in it for the moment was a severe steel chair with leather straps hanging off the arm rests and the front legs.

Oliver rarely used the conversation room himself. Normally he sent his boevik to "converse" with the people they needed information from — ordinarily Ivo was the one who volunteered to be the conversant.

It seemed appropriate now that he would be the one sitting in the chair this time.

Half an hour later two of his burlier footman who guarded the outside of the mansion dragged a struggling Ivo into the room. They forced him into the chair and got to work tying down his limbs.

"WHAT THE FUCK, OLIVER?" he screamed, struggling as they strapped him down. "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?"

Oliver didn't answer. He just trained his cold, empty eyes on the scene with his arms crossed.

Once Ivo was secured, the footmen left the room. It was just Oliver and Ivo.

Oliver gave his traitorous boevik a cold smile as he shrugged off his jacket. "Hello, Anthony."

"Oliver," the man growled, murderous rage all over his face. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"Funny," Oliver murmured. He slowly unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves so he could roll them up his forearms. "I was going to ask you the same thing."

Ivo struggled some more in his restraints, but Oliver took his time to get situated. Once he was, he walked closer to the chair then pulled his fist backward to land a hard punch right on the older man's jaw.

"We had an interesting turn of events tonight, Anthony," Oliver continued in his conversational tone. Ivo groaned with pain. "You see, it's come to our attention recently that we have a mole in our midst."

Oliver threw another punch right into his gut. Ivo let out a loud grunt at the hit.

"Some of our shipments of Vertigo were getting raided. But it wasn't the Triad, like we thought it might be. Turns out," he punched Ivo's other jaw, "they were the feds."

Oliver took a moment to let Ivo catch his breath. Then he grabbed both armrests and leaned forward over until their faces were just inches away. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you, Anthony?"

"Fuck you," Ivo growled. "I'm not the fucking mole!"

Oliver took on a mock thoughtful look on his face. "Huh. That's funny. Because tonight, the feds showed up at the place we told _you_ the next shipment of Vertigo would hit."

For a brief moment, a flicker of fear crossed over Ivo's eyes. It did nothing to quell Oliver's rage.

"I didn't have anything to do with that," he grunted. "It wasn't me."

Oliver pulled back with a theatrical shake of his head. "Oh, Anthony," he sighed. He pulled a knife from his boot, then pressed it to the top of Ivo's hand, pressing the tip lightly against the flesh. "Why do I not believe you?"

"It wasn't me!" he repeated in panic. "It wasn't! I swear to God, Oliver!"

His pleas did nothing to move the Bratva captain, and without warning, he sunk the knife into Ivo's hand. The man's screams echoed throughout the tiny room, but they wouldn't go anywhere. After all, what use was a conversation room if it wasn't soundproof?

Oliver pulled the knife back out once he was certain he'd gone all the way through Ivo's hand. "Try again, Anthony. And this time, try not to lie to me."

"I'm not!" he screamed. Sweat started to accumulate on his forehead as his panicked eyes pleaded. "I'm not lying, I swear!"

Oliver grit his teeth. It seemed that Ivo wasn't going to tell the truth without a little more pressure.

"Fine then," he said as he brought the knife to the other hand. "Let's pretend for a moment that I believed you. Let's pretend — just for a second — that you're not the mole. If it's not you, then how would you explain how the feds showed up tonight? Where _you_ knew the Vertigo was headed?"

"I don't know!" Ivo shouted in panic. "It must have been someone else trying to frame me! One of my associates!"

"Which one?" Oliver demanded, pressing the knife harder into his hand.

"I don't know! I don't know!"

"That's not a good enough answer." With that, he pushed the knife all the way through and Ivo once again let out a bloodcurdling scream.

"NIKOLAI!" he screamed. "IT WAS NIKOLAI!"

"Are you sure?" Oliver demanded. "Do you know it was Nikolai?"

"YES!" he screamed. "IT'S HIM, I SWEAR!"

"Do you suspect anyone else? Was Nikolai working alone?"

"NO, NO ONE ELSE! JUST NIKOLAI!"

Satisfied with the answer, Oliver straightened. "Now that wasn't so hard, was it?"

Armed with this new information, he opened the door to the conversation room, Ivo still whimpering in the chair. Closing the door behind him, he pulled out his burner cell and hit the first number on his speed dial.

The line rang a couple of times before a gruff voice picked up. "Yeah?"

"Nikolai Ulyanov. I need him gone."

A grunt of acknowledgement. "Isn't he one of yours?"

"Yes," Oliver bit out. "Can you do it or not?"

"Wire me the money tonight and he'll be gone tomorrow," Deadshot answered.

"Fine. You will have the money within the next five hours."

And with that, he closed the phone. Then he turned to the two footmen standing outside the door. "Be prepared to get rid of the body."

They nodded grimly.

He walked back into the room. Ivo was a shivering form in his chair. His entire body was covered in sweat.

"Oliver," he whimpered. "Please."

He ignored the man's pleading. "I've got good news and bad news for you, Anthony," Oliver said pleasantly. "The good news is, your associate's indiscretion will soon be taken care of. It seems that there hasn't been any irreparable damage to our organization, and with Nikolai gone, we can continue to wage our war with the Triad without the interference of the FBI."

Then he stepped forward and pulled the knife out of his hand. Ivo let out another scream.

"The bad news is," Oliver continued as he pulled a gun from the holster strapped to his knee, "I'm going to have to kill you."

He clicked the safety off, then leveled the barrel right in between Ivo's eyes.

"No!" Ivo screamed. "No, Oliver, please! Don't do this! Don't do this! I've been a faithful boevik, I swear! I've never done anything to harm this organization!"

"One of your associates went rogue," Oliver answered flatly. "And I can't have that."

Ivo's desperation twisted into an ugly scowl. "You entitled piece of shit!" he screamed. "You're nothing but a slimy weasel, a whiny, spoiled brat who inherited the position you have! You're not a real Bratva captain! You don't have the stones to kill me!

"Want to bet?" Oliver asked.

Then, without another word, he pulled the trigger.

The gunshot echoed in the tiny room, making his ears ring. The shot left a haze of smoke in its wake, but once it cleared, Oliver saw Ivo's slack body, his head thrown back. There was a clean entrance wound, circular and perfect right in the center of his forehead. Behind Ivo's body, the wall was spattered with blood and other bits that Oliver didn't want to look at too closely.

With a sigh, he dropped his arm. It was done. Finished.

He'd taken care of the problem.

A few minutes later he re-emerged from the conversation room. He signaled his footmen, who immediately sprung to action. Leaving them to it, he fled the dark basement, walking faster and faster up the stairs and through the mansion until he was outside.

It was jarring how quickly it had all happened. One minute he was waiting in his office to find out who among his men was the traitor. Then in what felt like a blink of an eye, Ivo was dead.

Oliver killed him.

His fury disappeared the minute he pulled the trigger. Now, all that was left was this empty sense of regret and shame.

Felicity had warned him not to let the Bratva take away his humanity.

He feared it might have been too late.

* * *

News of Ivo's death made the rounds through the underground community, and it was exactly how Oliver feared. The fact that there was a mole emboldened the Triad. Though he didn't bring it up to anyone, he was certain that they would make another very public attack in the hopes of drawing his illegal activities out into the open. It was only a matter of time.

And in addition to worrying about his underground activities, he had a lot going on his plate as CEO of Queen Consolidated. The Starling City Chamber of Commerce annual gala was coming up, and he was required to attend, something that Felicity did not hesitate to complain about for the whole week leading up to the event itself.

The morning of the event, Oliver waited in the foyer for Digg to bring the car around. However, Felicity was nowhere to be seen.

He frowned as he glanced down at his watch. Ever since Felicity started living in the Queen mansion, they both left for work at 7:30 on the dot. Well, it was 7:29 and she still hadn't emerged from her room.

"Raisa?" Oliver asked the housekeeper as she walked through. "Have you seen Felicity?"

"Oh, yes," the woman answered. "She wanted me to tell you that she was sick and would not be attending work or the gala this evening."

He quirked an eyebrow up at Raisa's announcement, mostly because it looked like the older woman was struggling very much not to smile.

"Is that so?" he said mildly. "Well I'm sure she won't mind if I go up there to check for myself."

Oliver fired off a quick text to Digg, then climbed back up the stairs and navigated his way to Felicity's room. Once he got there, he knocked softly on the door.

"Go away, I'm sick," a dim voice called from the other side.

He ignored her and opened the door. Sure enough, Felicity was sitting at her desk at her computer, completely dressed for work.

"Really?" he asked sardonically. "Doesn't look like you're sick."

She made a face at him. "Sure, I look fine on the _outside_ , but the inside is a mess. I mean there's like congestion, fever, dizziness, voices in my head, hallucinations...like for real, it's bad. Really bad. You shouldn't even be here, Oliver. I'm probably contagious."

He sighed and walked up to her to press the back of his hand to her forehead. "Well you don't feel like you have a fever. And you also don't sound congested."

"Well shows how much you know, mister."

He was torn between laughing and ripping his hair out in frustration. This woman would be the death of him.

"If you come to work with me, we can grab lunch at Big Belly Burger," he said in a taunting voice. "I'll even buy you a chocolate milkshake."

He saw her eyeballs shift to the side. "With extra whipped cream?"

"Yes."

She threw her head back and groaned. "Fine."

A tiny smile played on the corner of his lips, and after she reluctantly gathered her things, he ushered her out of her room. Together they got into the car that Digg had waiting outside for them.

"Nice to see you looking well, Felicity," Diggle said from the front seat.

She stuck her tongue out at him, which only made Oliver chuckle.

The rest of the morning was routine. Felicity seemed to have no problem checking her bad attitude at the door and she performed her job with her usual professionality and grace. It wasn't until lunch that her mask fell away.

The waitress brought by her shake, and what usually should have made her face light up with excitement didn't. Instead she just stirred her straw around in the tall glass, her face forlorn and her eyes far away.

Oliver glanced around the restaurant, making sure no one was paying attention to them. Then he leaned in. "Felicity?" he prompted her softly. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Her answer was automatic. Reflexive.

So clearly there was something wrong.

"Don't say nothing," he insisted with a frown. "Look, whatever it is, you can tell me."

She bit down on her lip, and it had Oliver distracted for a good minute as the image brought back the memory of just how that lip felt pressed against his. But he had to forcibly drag his mind back from the gutter. Felicity was worried or troubled about something. He needed to take care of it.

He needed to take care of her.

"I just…" she sighed. "I just have a bad feeling about tonight."

"Okay," he said slowly. "A bad feeling like...you think something's going to happen?"

She shrugged one shoulder. "Yeah. Just...I don't know." She looked up from her drink to stare at him with concerned blue eyes. "Don't you sometimes get those feelings? Like an ache in your chest?"

Honestly, he did know what she was talking about, but it was less like an ache in his chest. More often than not, it felt instead like dread creeping through him, like vines of ivy growing upward until he was trapped.

"Why do you think you have a bad feeling about tonight?"

She shrugged again. "I don't know. Maybe because the last time we went to a gala your mom was shot."

Ah. So that's what this was.

It was true, he'd heightened the security on this gala event in light of recent events. But it seemed he'd been so focused on making sure that nothing would happen that he'd neglected to drive home the point to his executive assistant that he'd taken care of practically every contingent.

"Felicity," Oliver said softly as he reached over the table to gently touch her wrist. "I know you're scared and you're worried. But Digg and I have every inch of that space covered tonight. Nothing's going to happen."

"That's what you said during the Unidac auction," she insisted. This time the terror was slightly more evident in her eyes and it was all he could do to push the table away from between them and wrap her in a reassuring huge. "You brought in extra security that day and the...the _Triad_ ," she whispered, "still managed to sneak in a huge explosive."

He frowned at the memory. "I know. Look, I can't promise that nothing will happen tonight, but I can promise that we've taken every precaution."

"It's just...you _say_ that, but then someone comes up and shoots you. Or shoots John. Or shoots someone else. And I…" she closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath.

Oliver waited patiently as she tried to gather her words.

"Watching you get shot was the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced," she finally whispered. "I don't know if I can do that again."

His heart leapt in his chest at her words.

She cared about him. _She_ cared about him. She _cared_ about him. She cared about _him_.

He didn't think it was possible to feel this light at Big Belly Burger.

"Felicity," he murmured, emotion coloring the way he said her name, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to watch that."

He took in a breath through his nostrils. "I can't...I can't promise you that nothing will happen tonight, because you and I both know that stuff happens all the time even when we try our hardest to prevent it."

She nodded, her eyes brimming over with sadness. He squeezed her hand to keep her from wandering too far into it.

"But I can promise this," he said. "I will do absolutely everything I can to make sure you're safe."

"That's what's got me worried," she whispered. He watched as tears started to pool in the bottom of her eyes. "I'm worried that you'll risk your own well being to ensure someone else's safety. And that's all well and good, but I just…"

She looked away, bringing her other hand to swipe away at her tears. "If you really want to make sure I'm safe, make sure you're safe too."

Once her eyes were clear, she turned her face back to look at him. A wobbly smile graced her mouth and Oliver could feel his heart thumping in every single cell of his body.

"I will literally lose my mind if I have to spend another night by your bedside after you've been shot," she said in a severe voice. "So do me a favor and try your hardest not to get shot again, OK?"

The corners of his lips pulled up in a soft smile.

"I promise."


	11. Chapter 11

Eventually the work day came to an end and Digg took them back to the mansion to get ready. They agreed to leave fifteen minutes before the event was supposed to start, but Oliver once again found himself standing alone in the foyer at the appointed time, waiting for Felicity to emerge from her room.

With a sigh, he walked back upstairs to her room.

"Felicity?" he called as he knocked on the door.

"Oliver?" she answered.

"You've already proved that you're not sick this morning so it's no use trying to get out of this."

"No, that's not it!" she shouted. He heard rustling on the other side of the door, then all of a sudden it wasn't there anymore.

Instead, Felicity was standing in the doorway with her back to him. "I can't get the zipper of my dress up!" she exclaimed. "I can't reach, can you please do it for me?"

Oh.

Oliver looked down and suddenly was all too aware of just how smooth the skin of Felicity's back looked.

He coughed. "Uh, sure," he said.

Thank God she was turned around, he thought to himself. That way she wouldn't be able to see his trembling hands.

He grabbed the zipper with his right hand and held the top of the dress together as he slowly brought it up. He held his breath still in his lungs while he did this, trying very, _very_ hard not to focus on the warm softness of her skin under his fingertips.

When the dress was fully zipped, Oliver's hands reluctantly fell away and she turned around with a smile gracing her face...and if he wasn't mistaken, just a hint of redness in her cheeks?

"Thank you," she said. Then she darted back inside her room for a second to grab her shoes and shove them haphazardly on her feet. "Sorry about that. I'm ready to go when you are."

Oliver still couldn't quite breathe, so he just nodded and let her lead the way back down the hallway and to the foyer. Diggle waited for them outside with the car, the passenger door open for them.

"You look nice tonight, Felicity," Diggle complimented.

"Thank you, John," she beamed.

For the first time that night, Oliver was able to take a look at what she was actually wearing, as opposed to being distracted by the open back of her dress.

For the gala tonight, Felicity donned a deep blue halter dress with a collar of diamonds hanging around her neck. She looked more than just nice, he thought. She looked radiant. Amazing. Incredible.

She was beautiful.

The ride from the mansion to the gala was a short one. The minute Digg pulled up to the curb, a valet stepped forward to open the door. Oliver got out, then turned to help Felicity. She slipped her hand in his with a smile and he felt himself returning it without thinking.

"Digg was right, by the way," he murmured so only she could hear. "You look lovely."

A red flush creeped up her neck and spread across her cheeks, but the compliment brought a smile to her face nonetheless. "Thank you," she answered.

Once she was safely out of the car, he reluctantly dropped her hand and they walked up to the entrance, ignoring the cameras flashing along the rope line and the hundreds of people calling out his name.

The minute they made it through the doors, however, all of Starling City's elite started pouncing on him, vying for his attention. Oliver braced himself for all the inane small talk, but Felicity stepped in without a second thought, pushing back gently and organizing their requests by completely taking over the conversation. Every time someone started to broach a topic that Oliver didn't want to discuss, she smoothly changed the subject, or pulled on Oliver's elbow with the excuse that he wasn't making the rounds.

The first two hours of the event went by smoothly under this system, and not for the first time did Oliver wonder how the hell he ever managed to survive his life without Felicity by his side.

When — finally — the crowd of people clamoring for his attention dissipated, Oliver let out a long sigh of relief.

"Thank God for you, Felicity Smoak," he muttered feebly as he grabbed two champagne flutes off a passing tray. He downed half of one in a single sip, then gave the other to his executive assistant. "If it weren't for your presence tonight, I'd be looking for ways to sneak off to the roof so I could fling myself off the top of the building."

She rolled her eyes as she took the flute from him. "Oliver Queen, you are the biggest baby in the world when it comes to formal events, you know that?"

He made a face at her. "This coming from the woman who tried to get out of it by playing sick?"

"Yeah, well I had an actual reason," she sniffed. "You're just being antisocial."

Oliver smiled as he took another sip of his champagne.

Half an hour later the catering wait staff started ushering people into the dining room. Felicity started to follow the crowd, but Oliver dipped his head close to her ear. "I'm going to check with security to see if everything's going smoothly," he whispered. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

Felicity nodded, and he couldn't help but notice with some small sense of satisfaction that she was blushing once again.

Once the majority of people made their way to the dining room, Oliver dipped past them, pretending like he was going to the bathroom. Then he made a beeline for the back entrance, where he knew Digg was stationed.

"Hey," he greeted his counselor as he approached. "How's it looking so far?"

Digg had on a wary expression. "You're not going to like it," he said grimly.

Oliver felt his stomach drop. "What?" he asked, with growing dread.

"Sebastian Blood is here."

The Bratva leader's blood ran ice cold in his veins at the mention of Blood's name. The last time he saw the sniveling sycophant was at the children's benefit, before he and the thugs he brought with him blew the place apart.

Not to mention that nightmare that led to the kiss he shared with Felicity.

But Oliver couldn't think about that at the moment. He shook his head hard, trying to clear the thoughts from his brain.

"Who's with him?"

"Two big, beefy guys I've never seen before," Digg answered. "But they didn't bring any weapons with them because they got through the security checkpoints."

"That doesn't mean anything," Oliver growled. "Keep an eye on them, and tell Sin and Roy to get out here. We're going to need all the outside backup we can get."

Digg nodded, then pulled out his phone to carry out the instruction. Oliver turned on his heel to go back to the party.

Once he was back in the dining room, he found Felicity sitting at the QC table, with the rest of the board of directors. Seeing here there, smiling at his CFO brought back the horrible memory of his nightmare to the forefront.

And with Sebastian Blood near, the nightmare was inches from becoming reality. The thought brought him to the edge of panic.

Felicity glanced over in his direction, and her dazzling grin wavered a little when she spotted him. She hooked an inquisitive eyebrow upward, and with a deep breath, he stopped forward to take his seat next to her.

"Are you all right?" she whispered from the side of her mouth.

He thought back to how scared she was this morning. How she could feel that something bad was going to happen tonight at this thing. The fear in her eyes wasn't something that he could shake that easily.

How could he tell her the truth without making her even more miserable?

The answer was he couldn't. So he lied.

"Yeah," he answered lightly, his hand coming to rest on the back of her bare shoulder. "Everything's fine. Digg just wanted to give me a security update."

Felicity's smile returned. Then she straightened in her seat as the waiters came by with the salads.

Oliver turned his attention to the plate in front of him while Felicity turned to talk to the CFO. Mindlessly, he picked up his fork and speared leaf after leaf, all while he tried subtly to scan the crowd, looking for the bastard who opened fire on a benefit for sick children.

It wasn't long before he found him — Sebastian Blood sat at a table in the very middle of the floor, flanked by two mountains in black suits. He seemed to be holding a very pleasant conversation with the other people at his table, but Oliver wasn't fooled for a second.

He started wondering when Blood's allegiances shifted. For so long, the man had been sucking up to Oliver and the Bratva, hoping to win over their favor to bless his political aspirations. Was it because Oliver had been keeping him at arm's distance that Blood went over to the Triad? Had the Triad courted him? What the hell did Blood have to offer that the Triad couldn't get anywhere else?

"Are you sure you're all right?"

Oliver started when he heard Felicity's voice so close to his ear. Blinking hard for several minutes, he realized that the salad in front of him had been replaced with a chicken, and his assistant was examining him with a look of combined curiosity and concern.

"Everything's fine," he insisted. He forced his lips to turn upward into a smile before reaching over and putting a hand over hers. "You worry too much."

"It's my job," she reminded him. Her eyes were filled with some kind of emotion he couldn't quite put his finger on, but the sight of it was enough to make his heart jump.

Dinner went by slowly, the passing time marked only by changing dishes and dull conversation. When the table was finally cleared, the wings in front of the stage parted to reveal a twenty-piece band.

Knowing that Blood was in the crowd, Oliver didn't want to let Felicity out of his sight. So without really thinking through the consequences of his plan, he turned to his assistant and offered his hand.

"Care to dance?" he asked.

He wished he had a camera at that instant just so he could capture the expression on her face. She blinked a couple of times in complete confusion before her mouth opened in a round "O."

"With me?" she responded incredulously. "Are you sure?"

"Why not?" Oliver grinned. Then, without waiting for her to actually say yes, he gently took her hand and led her on to the dance floor. The band was playing something quiet and a little lilting, which made it the perfect song to dance to.

"I'm not much of a dancer," she warned.

"Neither am I," he answered as he took her into his arms.

But despite their supposed mutual distaste for dancing, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Wrapping one arm around her waist, holding her hand and swaying together...it was almost like he'd done this a million times before.

"I feel like you've been so worried about me all night that I haven't stopped to ask about you," he murmured. "How are you doing? Do you still have a bad feeling?"

She gave him a tiny smile. "Not so much. Not right now."

He returned her grin. It was hard to feel anything but lightheadedness in that moment. Every time he was in her presence, he felt lighter. Every time she looked at him, his heart flipped over in his chest.

Suddenly, Felicity's expression turned to one of concern. Her eyebrows furrowed, then she glanced away, biting her lip.

"You know, Oliver, we never…" she trailed off, like she didn't quite know how to phrase what she wanted to say.

His heart, which had been pounding ever since he learned that Sebastian Blood was at this thing, stopped and turned stone cold. He knew what she was trying to say, even if she couldn't figure out how to say it. She was trying to bring up the kiss. The beautiful, mind-numbing, incredible kiss that neither one of them brought up since it happened.

In truth, he'd thought about that kiss almost every second of every day since it happened. For him, returning to that memory was like imagining infinite possibilities. It was a tiny moment, a little dot in which he wasn't a Bratva captain and she wasn't his assistant. They were just Oliver and Felicity, without any obligations or responsibilities. They could just _be_.

Of course, it was only a moment, and as soon as they came apart, they were forced once more into their roles. It couldn't last, as much as he would have liked. So he left it at that, a beautiful moment, untouched by the darkness of his life. He wanted it to remain that way, but he knew the minute they talked about it, the memory would turn tainted.

"You don't have — " Oliver began, but he was interrupted.

"I know I don't, but...look, I think it's important I say this because I've just been locked up in my thoughts for weeks, which, let me tell you, isn't a fun place to be when you just keep thinking the same thing over and over again."

He didn't say anything, because he knew the feeling well.

"I don't have powers of telepathy or anything, so I don't know what you were thinking or are thinking or even if you're thinking anything at all...but for me, that kiss was something that I haven't been able to stop thinking about."

There it was. Out in the open. No way for him to escape it or run away.

But now that he knew what she was thinking, did he really want to?

It _had_ been a perfect, beautiful moment. But what if it didn't have to end? What if there could be other moments like it?

He'd imagined other moments. He imagined them almost as much as he thought about that kiss. Every time Felicity was in the room, he wanted to grab her by the wrists and kiss her again. He wanted to continue where they'd left off. He wanted to see where they might have gone if that phone hadn't rung and interrupted them. Even now he could imagine pulling her aside into a secluded corner, taking her hair down from its messy knot and dipping his tongue into her mouth.

Was it possible that their kiss didn't have to be the only one?

"Felicity, I — "

Before he could say what he was, though, a sharp tap on his shoulder interrupted him.

With an irritated huff, he dropped Felicity's hand and turned around to find Digg with a grave expression.

"Mr. Queen, there's something you need to see," he said grimly.

Oliver's muscles went cold again, and he was dragged back into the present. It was a painful reminder of his reality.

With a quiet nod, Digg turned on his heel and the Bratva captain followed him out of the room.

"What's going on?" he asked quietly once they were far enough away from the crowd.

"Roy and Sin intercepted someone who was trying to get in," Digg answered. "Had a rifle, two different handguns and a belt full of grenades strapped to him."

"Does this person have a name?"

"Not one that he's willing to give up."

Digg led Oliver outside to a corner of the parking lot hidden by the Dumpsters. Roy and Sin were standing, surrounded by a dozen or more Bratva guards. They had formed a tight circle, and as Oliver got closer, they parted to reveal a boy — no older than Thea — sitting on the ground, his arms secured behind his back.

Oliver's mouth twisted into a grimace. Without a word, he held out his hand and Digg slapped a gun into his open palm. Taking the gun, he clicked the safety off and cocked it before pointing it right at the boy's skull. The guard standing around them took a safe step backward.

"Who are you?" Oliver growled. "Who sent you?"

The boy rolled his eyes before his lips lifted in a disconcerting smile. "Well, well, well," he chuckled, as if he wasn't kneeling on the ground, surrounded by almost a dozen dangerous thugs. "If it isn't the mighty Oliver Queen himself."

An impatient huff escaped his nostrils. It was like the kid was taking his cues from Disney villains. Well, Oliver would teach him pretty quickly that this was not a movie — this was real life.

"You've got about fifteen seconds to tell me what you know before I blow your brains out right here in the parking lot," he warned.

"He said you'd do this," the kid continued, as if the threat was nothing more than a suggestion. "He said you'd make a show of force. Try to make yourself look like a big tough guy, surrounded by a bunch of other big, tough guys." The boy chuckled.

" _Who_?" Oliver demanded, louder.

Suddenly the boy dropped the playfulness and looked up defiantly, glaring right at Oliver. "He's ten times the leader you are," he hissed. "He would never hide behind a bunch of goons! He wouldn't make them do his dirty work!"

"Really?" Oliver spat. "Then why are you the one facing the barrel of my gun instead of your precious leader?"

The boy's smile widened. "Because he has much more important things to do."

Oliver's eyes narrowed. He stepped forward until the barrel was pressing against his temple. "You have five seconds before I reach the end of my patience and shoot you," he snarled.

"Do it!" the boy cackled gleefully. "Go ahead! But I'm just a foot soldier, and we have limitless resources! Killing me won't end this war you've brought upon yourself!"

Oliver felt abruptly furious. A war that _he_ brought upon himself? Without even bothering to reign himself in, he slammed the butt of the gun into the boy's eye, and his head jerked backward at the contact.

"You started this!" he raged. "When you killed my father! _You_ brought this destruction!"

A cut opened up on the boy's brow bone and a nasty bruise started to blossom. But instead of showing any outward sign of pain, he laughed.

"Is that what you think?" He was almost chuckling.

Before Oliver could demand what the hell he meant by that, a faraway scream pierced the night. He whipped his head around and milliseconds later, he saw a flood of people fleeing the same building the gala was being held. Dozens of Starling City's one percent, running in their couture gowns and shiny black tuxedos.

"What the hell," Roy growled behind him. The rest of the guard instinctively reached for the weapons strapped to their belts.

But Oliver wasn't comprehending much, because the minute he saw people streaming out of the building in fear, his eyes automatically started searching for a slight blonde woman swathed in blue. Dread started to envelope him when he realized she wasn't anywhere in the crowd.

"Digg!" he shouted.

"I'm on it!" the guard answered, immediately running toward the building. Half of the contingent followed him into the fray.

Oliver turned back to the boy kneeling before him. The smug look on his face was what broke him.

In a fit of rage, the Bratva captain grabbed the kid by the collar and threw him against the Dumpster. Then he pulled him up by his jacket and slammed him hard on the ground. His head cracked against the pavement and Oliver watched in vindictive satisfaction as the boy let out a groan of pain.

"Listen to me carefully, you little shit," he began threateningly, his forearm pressing against the boy's windpipe. "You are going to tell me who you work for. You are going to tell me what you had planned tonight. And you are going to tell me _right fucking now_ before I break your neck."

The kid's face reddened from Oliver's chokehold, but he still managed to speak. "You can threaten and kill as many of us as you want," he grunted, "but you'll never be able to defeat us! Not when you're already on the path to self-destruction on your own!"

His words — cryptic as they were — weren't enough to distract him from his rage. Felicity was still in there. She was still in danger that he didn't know how to gauge, and this pint-sized punk was part of the cause.

With angry hands, he pulled his gun out of his back pocket and pressed the barrel against the boy's temple. "Last chance," he growled. "Tell me who you're working for."

The boy gave him one last menacing smirk. "Go to hell."

Oliver's face tightened in fury. He had finally reached the end of his patience.

"After you," he grunted. Then he pulled the trigger. In an instant, the boy's jaw went slack.

Oliver stood from his crouch, took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He waited for the remorse that usually followed after he killed someone, but it didn't come.

The only thing he felt was the renewed terror over the fact that Felicity was still nowhere to be seen, and he didn't know if she was safe.

"Dispose of this," he commanded his guard, gesturing to the boy's body. Then he tucked the gun into his jacket pocket and ran toward the panicked crowds.

Policemen started to arrive on the scene; the red and blue lights on the top of their cars cast an eerie glow over everything.

Oliver spotted Detective Quentin Lance and made an immediate beeline for him. "Detective!" he shouted over the din. "Detective!"

The man glanced over and his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Though he was (reluctantly) on the Bratva's payroll, he held a deep distrust of the Russian mob and made his feelings known every time it was his turn to work with them.

"I don't have time now, Queen," he barked. "I have a situation in there."

"What? What is it?" Oliver demanded. "What's going on?"

"It's a hostage situation. Three armed men are holding a dozen people hostage. I'm hearing reports that their carrying machine guns. QJY-88s."

Oliver's stomach dropped to his knees, and his ears suddenly blocked out all sound. Those were Chinese manufactured guns.

This was the work of the Triad.

"Any dead?" he asked.

"None reported."

"What do they want?"

Lance rolled his eyes impatiently. "Look, Queen, we don't know. They haven't made any demands yet. Now would you get out of my way so I can do my job and assess the situation?"

Oliver sidestepped the detective's arm and started toward the building. He didn't care if there were three armed men or fifty, and he sure as hell wasn't going to wait for the Starling City Police Department to take their sweet ass time to defuse a hostage situation. He was going in there himself.

"Whoa, what are you doing?" Lance yelled. He grabbed Oliver's arm and yanked back hard. "You can't go in there!"

"Like hell I can't!" Oliver shouted. "I've got people in there!"

Lance glanced around furtively, then lowered his voice to address Oliver. "Look, you know that we're going to work with your people. But you're going to have to trust us."

That wasn't what he meant, Oliver thought desperately. He had _a person_ in there. He had one very, very important person in there and he could feel himself spiraling deeper and deeper into insanity the more he thought of her trapped among a group of Triad soldiers aiming a machine gun to her head.

His anxious legs forced him to start pacing, but seconds later his phone buzzed in his pocket. A quick glance told him it was Digg.

"What have you got?" he demanded, not bothering with any pleasantries.

"It's Blood," the counselor answered. "He's blocked off the main ballroom, and he's got two of his goons with guns inside."

Oliver's heart pounded in his chest. "Is Felicity still in there?" he shouted.

"Yes." And the phone went dead.

He wanted to crumple right then and there. He wanted to fall to his knees in the middle of the panicked crime scene and weep.

He promised her. He _promised_ that he'd do everything he could to keep her safe.

He should have known better. He should have known to listen to her pleas, her warning that something bad was going to happen.

She'd been right all along.

The Bratva captain closed his eyes. He had to focus — Felicity still needed him. And he made a goddamn promise.

Lance looked at Oliver suspiciously. "Queen, what's going on here?"

Before he could answer the detective's question, another officer walked up to Lance, holding up his radio. "Sir, we're picking up communications from the leader," the woman informed him. "He wants to talk to you."

Lance took the radio and held it up to his mouth. "This is Detective Lance. Who am I speaking with?"

A pause. Then an oily voice buzzed over the static to answer him.

"Hello, Detective," the voice said. It made the hair on Oliver's neck stand on end once he recognized the voice.

"This is Sebastian Blood. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me."

"All right, Sebastian. You've started a bit of a fuss here," Lance said in a soothing tone that immediately made Oliver indignant. The police were treating this guy like a five-year-old who was having a temper tantrum when instead they should have been storming the damn building.

Lance ignored Oliver's pointed scowls as he continued. "Now as I understand it, you've got a few people there at gunpoint. What's it going to take for you to let them go?"

"Oh, Detective, I'm afraid there's nothing you could offer me to do that," Blood said genially. "However, if you were to find a certain Oliver Queen and perhaps put him on the line? That might help speed up negotiations."

Oliver made a grab for the radio and put it up against his mouth. "Listen to me, you son of a bitch," he growled into the speaker. Lance immediately tried to wrestle it away from him, but Oliver's grip was too tight. "When I get my hands on you, I swear to God I'm going to rip you limb from limb."

Lance finally managed to rip the radio out of his hands. "What the hell are you doing?" he demanded. "Do you have any idea what kind of damage you might have caused? You _never_ threaten someone in a hostage negotiation!"

"That wasn't a threat, that was a promise."

Suddenly the radio came back to life. "I had a feeling you'd say that, Mr. Queen."

There was a shuffling sound on the other end of the line. Then a cry.

"Oliver!"

The voice shouting out his name tugged on every single muscle in his body. It pulled at him to be with her. It pulled at him to rescue her from the horrible situation he brought her to.

"Oliver, whatever he wants, don't do it! Not for me!"

That was already out of the question. He was going to get Felicity back, and he was going to do it by any means necessary, even if it meant running Blood down — hell, _especially_ if it meant running him down.

Even if it meant leaving everyone else in there to die. Oliver knew he would sacrifice everyone else's lives in a heartbeat if it meant saving hers.

"Now, now, _dear_ ," Blood sneered and the violent rage once again welled up inside him. "I thought we agreed you'd only speak when you were instructed?" A thudding sound, then a cry that was unmistakably Felicity's.

"BLOOD!" Oliver screamed into the radio. Lance didn't even bother trying to keep it away from him this time. "I SWEAR TO GOD, I WILL _KILL_ YOU!"

"Yes, well, while that may be your inclination for the moment, we've still got this lovely young woman at our disposal and quite a few other innocents here," the man continued smoothly. "And we're inclined to let them all go...for a price."

Lance pushed Oliver away, trying to regain control of the situation. "What do you want, Sebastian?"

"It's not what _I_ want, Detective," he said in a long-suffering, theatrical sigh. "It's what I _need_. What the city needs, really."

"And what might that be?"

"The city needs to be rid of the Bratva. I mean, think about it. Things didn't really start to go to hell until the Bratva started running everything. Drugs, arms, gambling and prostitution rings...surely you've noticed it. Haven't you, Detective?" Then there was a loaded pause. "Or maybe you're part of the problem as well."

It wasn't a question, and Lance didn't answer.

"Anyway, my demand is simple," Blood continued. "Right in this very building, I've got a television set up. It's on channel 52 right now, and it's showing the live coverage of the hostage situation. You see all those cameras set up around the area?"

Lance and Oliver both turned around, and sure enough there were a whole crowd of live television cameras and news reporters, inching as close to the scene as the police would let them.

"What about them?" Lance asked.

"I want Oliver Queen to go to those reporters and tell them the truth," Blood said. "I want him to stand there, before the whole city — the whole _world_ — and tell them what they don't know about the renown businessman: that he is, in fact, a crime boss, and Bratva captain."

Oliver's hands clenched into fists at his side. So this was how they outed him in the end: by forcing him to do it himself.

"Did you hear me, Oliver?"

He snatched the radio from Lance's hands. "Yes, I heard you," he growled into the speaker.

"Good," Blood answered in a satisfied tone. "You have exactly one hour to figure out what you're going to say. If, in one hour, I don't see your handsome face on my screen telling everyone the truth, I will start shooting hostages. Starting with this lovely blonde."

And the line went dead.


	12. Chapter 12

"No. Absolutely not."

Diggle's answer to Oliver's predicament was unsurprising, but ultimately worthless. He might not have wanted the Bratva captain to give in, but he still didn't offer any options.

Oliver scrubbed his hands over his tired face. "Unless you come up with some sort of alternate plan, he's going to start shooting people in there."

"You have absolutely no guarantee that he's _not_ going to start shooting hostages if you _do_ give in to his demands," Digg pointed out.

"Then what do you suggest I do?" Oliver demanded.

"Let us and the police take care of it."

"How? You said it yourself, he's got the whole room barricaded, men guarding every entrance from the inside."

"We'll find a way."

"He said I've only got an hour."

"An hour is plenty of time."

Oliver kept shaking his head over and over, but Digg reached over and placed both hands on his friend's shoulders.

"Oliver, you have to trust us," he insisted. "We know what we're doing. You have to protect the organization, and we have to protect you."

That was all well and good, to talk about protecting the organization. But the only thing, the only _person_ he wanted to protect had a Chinese manufactured machine gun pointed at her head at the moment.

"It's Felicity," he said in a voice that came out like a plea.

Picturing his assistant's face contorted in terror, he wanted to break down all over again.

"I know," Digg answered. "She's going to be OK. We'll make sure of it."

With one last clap on his shoulder, Digg turned on his heel and walked away. Oliver watched his friend's retreating back, all while he tried to come to terms with the hand he'd been dealt.

Anatoly had warned him. The Bratva boss had told him ahead of time all the dangers he would face once Oliver declared war on the Triad. But Oliver had been willing to give up what humanity he had left to bring the Chinese crime family to their knees and to make them pay for killing his father.

But Oliver never could have predicted this. Not in a million years.

Lance and Digg forced Oliver to go sit by the ambulances, far away from the prying eyes of the Starling City media. Digg thought that perhaps by keeping an eye on him there, he wouldn't be able to cause any trouble. But apparently, Digg didn't have any idea how desperate Oliver was to get Felicity out of danger.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, trying to remember what had happened before the night had taken such a horrific turn. He'd been dancing with her and they started to broach the volatile topic of that kiss.

God, had that been less than an hour ago? It felt like ages.

Only the possibility of losing her could have driven the memory of that kiss out of his mind so thoroughly.

If he had known that this might be the last time he'd ever get to see her, would he have done anything differently? What would he have said, before Digg had cut him off to lead him out of the building?

He thought back to that loaded moment. Just after she told him that she thought about that kiss all the time. It wasn't the same as saying that she had feelings for him, but it was close.

He might have said it. He _should_ have said it. Told her he thought about her all the time. That he wondered about her childhood. That he wanted to know everything about her, from her favorite color to how she lost her first tooth. That he thought about the kiss they shared almost nonstop. That he imagined so many other scenarios that included kissing.

But he couldn't even imagine anything else at the moment. Not when there was a gun pointed at her head.

Oliver glanced down at his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed since Blood had given him the ultimatum.

Forty-five minutes left left for Digg to come up with a plan.

Either that, or forty-five minutes before Oliver stood before those cameras and the world and announced who he really was.

* * *

"Queen!"

Oliver's head shot up from his palms at the sound of his name. He just had twenty minutes left until they came up on Blood's deadline.

From his left, he saw Lance and Digg rushing toward him. Oliver clambered off the back of the ambulance toward them.

"What do you have?" he demanded. "What's the plan?"

"It turns out there's one entryway they _don't_ have covered," Lance began. "The roof."

Oliver raised a skeptical eyebrow. "And how the hell is that going to work?"

"There's a balcony that's only accessible from inside the building...or if you have a helicopter drop you onto it," Digg explained.

"Isn't he going to hear a helicopter way too close to the building?"

Digg shook his head. "The room he's in is on the second floor. The balcony is on the third. Plus there have been helicopters flying overhead all night."

"Who all is going to be dropped?"

"Some SWAT agents and a few of our guard," Digg answered.

"I'm coming too," Oliver declared.

Digg shot him a long-suffering look, but didn't say anything. He knew his boss too well to try and talk him out of it.

"Fine, but you understand that we're doing this _my_ way," Lance told them sternly. "You will follow my orders and you will do what I tell you. Do you understand?"

Oliver nodded. He had no intentions of actually following through and listening to the man's bluster, but at the moment he was so focused on getting into that building and saving Felicity that he might have agreed to anything.

Fifteen minutes later, Oliver was dangling from a suspension line with five other SWAT agents and Bratva members. The chopper gently lowered them onto the balcony, and the minute their feet hit the ground, the six of them took off running toward the door.

One of the SWAT team members took the lead while Digg took the rear. Oliver stood in front of Digg and together, they ran down the stairs and paused at each corner. Oliver had his handgun out, holding it close to him, his finger hovering over the trigger in case they ran into one of Blood's goons.

By some stroke of providence, they didn't run into anyone until they reached the ballroom.

"We go on my order, and my order only," the SWAT team captain hissed under his breath to the rest of them. "Our first priority is to secure the hostages."

"No one kills Blood," Oliver added. "I want him alive."

"That's not our priority," the team captain barked.

Oliver glared at him. "That might not be your priority, but it's mine."

The threat in his tone was clearly evident, and it sent a clear message to everyone else that the order was not to be disobeyed.

After they nailed down their plan, the team leader and the two other SWAT team members used a battering ram to slam open the double doors. Oliver and the Bratva contingent ran through the minute the doors were open, their guns drawn and pointed out in front of them.

"Freeze!" the SWAT captain shouted. "Nobody moves a goddamn muscle!"

The ballroom that had been been beautifully decorated when the evening first began had been torn to shambles. Tables and chairs were upended, drapes tattered, food smeared everywhere. On the dance floor, the hostages sat with their arms zip tied behind them.

Oliver's eyes immediately searched for his assistant, and he found her, sitting on a chair placed a few feet away from the hostages. Her arms were tied to her armrests while her ankles were secured to the chair legs. Her carefully pinned hair had completely fallen apart. The skirt of her dress was torn. Her eyes were bloodshot, and a bleeding cut had opened up right over her left eye.

The sight of Felicity injured fanned the flames of his fury until Oliver could hardly breathe.

The sound of laughter diverted his attention. He jerked his head toward the source of the sound and he saw Sebastian Blood, flanked by two mountainous bodyguards with hoods standing right in front of the SWAT team.

"Well, well, well," Blood chuckled. "Oliver, it looks like you found another way to around my ultimatum after all."

"FREEZE!" the SWAT captain screamed. His grip on his weapon tightened and the other two SWAT team members swarmed around him.

Blood looked abruptly annoyed. "There's really no need for yelling," he told the man frostily. "I'm going to have to ask you to keep it down otherwise I will have to take you out."

"Shut up, you fucking prick!" the captain snapped. The other SWAT members rustled around him, restless at the conflict.

Blood's eyes narrowed at the interruption. "That language is not necessary."

Oliver couldn't tell for sure under all the protective gear, but he was fairly certain the SWAT captain was smirking. "And what are you going to do about it, asshole? You're outnumbered, two to one."

Blood held up a hand. "That may be true," he conceded. "But superior numbers don't necessarily grant an upperhand." Then, with lightning quick reflexes, he pulled a gun from the holster at his waist and pointed it at Felicity.

Oliver's grip tightened on his firearm. "Blood," he growled. "I swear to God, if you hurt her, I will kill you."

The man in question rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, I've already heard it, Oliver. You're quite tiresome in your threats, you know."

The barrel of the gun came closer to Felicity until the metal was pressed right up against her skin. For the first time since he barged into the room, Oliver's eyes immediately went to her face, bracing himself for any sort of terrified expression — but he didn't find any. Instead, her eyes were closed, the rest of her features completely smooth.

She was trying to hold onto her composure, he knew. But all he wanted in that moment was for her to open her eyes so he could catch a glimpse of what she might be feeling.

"Well since you can't seem to take simple instruction, and since I seem to be a little bit outnumbered, I think we can strike up a bit of a compromise, don't you? I will let you and all the rest of these lovely people go. But she," his gun pressed harder against Felicity's cheek and for the first time, Oliver saw her flinch, "she must stay."

"Like hell," Oliver spat.

Blood pulled a mock surprised expression. "Why, Oliver, surely you're joking? This is quite the deal. There are eleven innocent people here. Eleven people with spouses and children, brothers and sisters, people who _love_ them. You have the choice to let them walk free! All I ask in return is that you leave this beautiful young woman here with me."

"And if I don't?"

Blood shrugged like it didn't matter. "Then I'll kill you all."

Right then, Felicity's eyes shot open. And for the first time, Oliver could read the terror in her expression.

But the words that came out of her mouth were the furthest thing from anything he could have expected.

"Oliver," she begged, "go. Leave me here. Please."

Everything inside of him was tearing in two. In any other circumstance, he would have done anything she asked of him. He would have given her the world if she wanted it.

But this, he could not do.

Yes, of course, he wanted to make sure that all of these innocent people made it out of the situation alive, but it was nothing, absolutely _nothing_ , compared to his deep _need_ to get Felicity as far away from the barrel of Sebastian Blood's gun as possible.

The fact that she was asking him to leave her there made him want to whither and die.

"Please," she whispered.

"Felicity." His voice broke over her name.

She bit down on her lip, her eyes never straying away from his. Then she nodded ever so slightly, like she was saying it was OK. That it was OK to just abandon her. That it was OK to choose all these people over her.

But it wasn't OK. It was far, far from OK.

"I'm tiring of this, Oliver," Blood drawled. His finger inched over the trigger. "I'm giving you exactly ten seconds to make your decision."

He began the countdown, but then something peculiar happened so fast, he almost thought his eyes might have been playing tricks on him. A tiny red dot flickered over Blood's chest, almost like a laser.

A half a second later, Blood stopped mid-count. His entire body froze, his eyes still wide, his mouth still opened. But then his hand loosened over the gun and it clattered to the floor. Seconds later, his body followed with a loud, final thud.

No one in the room moved a single muscle. They were all still too shocked.

The SWAT members were the first to recover. Seconds after Blood went down, they took down the two guards on either side, then immediately went to secure the rest of the room.

The SWAT and the Bratva together took down the other guards posted at each entrance. Once they were stripped of their weapons and were cuffed, the cops came flooding in to help release the hostages.

But Oliver didn't care about the rest of them. The only person he cared about was staring right at him.

With impossibly long strides, he crossed the room to where Felicity sat. Kicking aside Blood's lifeless body, he slashed at the ropes that bound her to her chair. Once her limbs were free, she got to her feet and threw her arms around his shoulders.

Oliver clinged to her as she sobbed. He tried to keep as steady and as still as possible, but his body shook almost as much as she did.

He had been just inches away from losing her, and that thought was just too much to bear.

"Oliver," she wept. "Oliver, oh thank God!"

"Shhh," he murmured, his hand smoothing over her messy hair. "Shhh, it's all right. I'm right here. You're going to be fine."


	13. Chapter 13

**Phase Four**

Without a doubt, this was the most brutal professional ass-whooping Felicity had ever been witness to.

It made her want to scurry under her chair and hide.

"In all my years with the bureau, I have never seen such complete and total incompetence," Waller declared.

The FBI director stood in front of her desk, her arms crossed over her chest. John, on the other hand, was standing in front of her. His face was very carefully blank while his hands were resting in front of him in a neutral, non threatening position.

"What do you have to say to yourself?" she demanded.

"Nothing," John answered. He continued to stare straight ahead, taking Waller's words in stride. "I was completely reckless."

"You're damn right you were reckless," Waller growled. "You abandoned your post. You failed to case the entire scene. Agent Smoak was nearly _killed_ because of your actions."

The woman herself closed her eyes at the mention of her latest brush with death.

Being blessed — or really cursed — with a photographic memory meant that she would remember a lot of things with stunning clarity for the rest of her life. But she knew, without a doubt, that she would be haunted by the feeling of a gun pressed against her face until the day she died.

Felicity had been completely calm and cool during the whole ordeal itself, mostly because her brain couldn't make the connection between fantasy and reality in the moment. But the minute Blood was dead — thanks to an FBI sniper Agent Michaels had dispatched to the scene — she had fallen apart. It took her a full hour to stop shaking, and even then it was only thanks to the large dose of sedative the on-site medic had pushed into her veins.

"You're right," John said. "You're absolutely right. And there is nothing you can say that could possibly make me feel worse than I already do. If it hadn't been for Agent Michaels' quick thinking...well, I don't even want to think about it."

"Agent Diggle, if it weren't for the fact that you weren't already so deeply embedded in your cover, I would pull you out and fire your ass faster than you could blink," Waller answered coldly.

"OK," Agent Michaels interrupted. "I think we can all agree that Saturday night was a pretty terrible scenario, but let us all take a step back and appreciate the fact that all our assets escaped injury with their covers still intact."

Waller took in a deep breath through her nose, then let it out through her mouth. "Fine," she snapped. "Give me a status report, then. How has this incident changed our current situation?"

John cleared his throat. "Queen is still considering different modes of retaliation, but the main cell in Moscow is insisting he not make any attacks in public yet. Anatoly wants him to strengthen their lines of supply for vertigo before taking the war against the Triad into the daylight."

"I take it that's something he's not inclined to do," Michaels commented.

"No," John agreed.

Waller looked at Felicity. "Well?" she demanded. "What does he have planned, then?"

She winced. Felicity knew eventually Waller would ask her something like this, but she had been dreading it almost as much as she dreaded having to witness John's dressing down.

After she had come down from her shock, Felicity found herself in a bed down in the basement hospital of the Queen Mansion. When she tried to get out of it and leave, she found several Bratva footmen stationed outside her door, insisting in very rough voices that she go back in her bed and rest.

Since then, Oliver had kept her at a very safe distance. The footmen wouldn't let her near his study for any of the strategy meetings, and when she tried to seek him out herself, he was always locked in his study or "out." Whatever the hell that meant.

"I don't know," Felicity admitted. "He won't let me in on what he's thinking."

Waller growled in frustration. "Agent Smoak, that is _exactly_ the reason we sent you in the first place. This is your _job_ , and you are failing miserably at it."

Felicity bristled at Waller's harsh words. "Well _excuse_ me for having a gun pointed at my head by some crazy Triad psychopath," she shot back. "May I remind you that I didn't even want this job to begin with!"

"You took on this job willingly," Waller answered coldly.

Felicity snorted. "Willingly" her ass. Waller had all but blackmailed her with the promise of finally earning her freedom.

"That's enough," Agent Michaels said disapprovingly. "Agent Smoak has been understandably out of commission for the past forty-eight hours, but now that she's recovered, you can once again infiltrate Queen's inner circle."

"That's the problem," Felicity said. She was directing her answer at Agent Michaels, because she found her handler to be much more reasonable than Waller. "He's been holding me at arm's length, and he's been doing it on purpose. He won't stay in a room long enough for me to even talk to him."

"Well you're going to have to find a way," Waller insisted. "Agent Diggle is supposed to infiltrate Bratva strategy, but _you're_ supposed to gain Queen's confidence. Or have you forgotten the parameters of your mission?"

Felicity's jaw snapped shut. She bit down hard on her tongue, lest she open her mouth and tell Waller where exactly she could shove the parameters of the mission.

"Queen's a tough nut to crack," John said in Felicity's defense. "He tends to get into his own headspace at times, and he doesn't let anyone in on what he's thinking."

"I don't care," Waller responded. "Agent Smoak, you do what you need to do to earn your way back into Queen's confidences. That is your mission. Do you understand?"

Felicity's spine went rigid at the command. Tamping down all of her resentment, she managed a jerky nod.

Satisfied, Waller leaned back against her desk and waved her hand to dismiss the three of them from her office.

Once the door to Waller's office had closed behind them, Lyla turned to face John and Felicity. "How are you?" she asked them seriously.

They didn't say anything. In truth, there weren't words for that kind of dressing down from your boss.

"All right," she said with a sigh. "Well, like I said earlier in there, nothing really irreparable happened Saturday. You're both still alive and neither of you have been made."

They both nodded.

"Then proceed as normal. Felicity, your job now is to get back in with Queen. By whatever means necessary."

It was the same thing Waller said, except Lyla had said it in a much kinder and less demanding tone. Felicity nodded, looking down at her sensible black ballet flats.

"OK. We'll be in touch. Expect contact within the next forty-eight hours."

With that, Lyla turned on her heel and John and Felicity took the back way out of the offices, leading out to the underground parking garage.

"Well," John sighed, the minute they stepped out into the underground parking structure. "That could have been worse."

Felicity snorted. "Are you kidding me? I thought Waller was going to launch herself at you and claw your eyes out."

"I would have been able to defend myself," he answered with a grin.

They got into the car and John slowly pulled out of the parking garage and onto the street. The ride was quiet for the first few moments, before Felicity spoke up.

"So seriously: what's been eating Oliver recently?" she asked. "I haven't even been able to get him to _look_ at me."

Digg sighed. "He feels guilty," he answered. "He blames himself for what happened at the gala. He thinks that if he listened to you in the first place, when you said you felt like something bad was going to happen, he could have prevented it all. He thinks you're starting to resent him."

Felicity closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window. It made sense in its own way — in all the character profiles she'd read of Oliver and in what she'd seen in the time she'd known him, of course he would have been the kind of guy to take on all that weight himself.

But, of course, none of what had happened at the gala was really his fault. None of them could have foreseen Sebastian Blood taking twelve people hostage and threatening to kill her unless he outed himself to the whole city.

"Why can't he tell me all of that himself?" she muttered.

John chuckled. "That's assuming that he can even put words to his emotions right now."

Felicity rolled her eyes. Men.

In truth, she would have been far less concerned about the whole situation if it hadn't come right after what had essentially been a huge confession for her.

She had put it all on the line. She told Oliver the truth, that she couldn't stop thinking about the kiss and he was _just about to answer_ before Digg had tapped him on the shoulder and led him away.

The minute Oliver had gone, Felicity thought for sure he'd come back and tell her he felt the same way. Because her memory was perfect and because she couldn't stop thinking about the kiss itself, she had analyzed it from every angle. Having done so, she came to several conclusions: first, Oliver Queen certainly knew what he was doing with his mouth. Second, he had to have felt the same way.

He just _had_ to. There was no other explanation.

The minute John pulled into the QC parking lot, Felicity heaved a sigh at the thought of having to don her undercover mask again, and dealing with a moody and closed off Oliver Queen. The whole double life thing was starting to get exhausting.

John heard her sigh. "Yeah," he nodded. "I feel the same way."

Without another word, the two of them inwardly braced themselves and walked once more into the lion's den.

* * *

It was one thing for Waller and Lyla to tell Felicity to get back into Oliver's good graces.

Actually accomplishing that was something else altogether.

The minute she and Digg returned to QC, Felicity got into the executive elevator. The entire way up, she kept trying to think of ways to get Oliver to talk to her again. Bringing up the gala at work was out of the question — he still maintained a rigid firewall, keeping all business matters at QC and all Bratva matters at home.

But hopefully bringing up QC stuff would loosen him up at least a little.

Once the elevator doors opened, she stepped off and made a beeline for her desk. She rifled through the papers and folders, looking for something she could use to barge into his office with. Then she found a stack of expense reports he had to sign off, and she immediately tucked them under her arm.

Knocking lightly on Oliver's door, she peeked her head in. She found him at his desk, leaning back in his chair with a consternated expression while he read over a stack of papers in his hands.

For a split second, Felicity allowed herself to admire his impressive figure. His body was full of grace and power, even when he was still. His face was as chiseled as a statue and she knew — thanks to the fact that she shared living quarters with him — that the rest of his body was much the same.

She was suddenly assaulted by the memory of their kiss. She thought back to the way his chest felt pressed against hers when he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer to him. Her cheeks went warm at the thought.

"Can I help you, Felicity?"

That started her out of her reverie.

"Right, yes," she blurted. In a jerky motion, she pushed through the doorway and pulled the folder of expense reports out from under her arm. "Gary from Finance dropped these off on my desk a little bit ago. He needs you to sign off on them."

Without looking up, he gestured to the far corner of his desk. "Yeah, you can leave them there. Thanks."

Felicity stepped forward and did as he asked. Biting her lip, she cast around for any other excuse she could come up with to stay.

"Do you need anything from me?" she asked. "Coffee or an aspirin or something?"

He shook his head, still not looking at her. "No. Thank you."

Her shoulders slumped every so slightly. "OK. Well...you know where to find me. If you need me. Or if you don't need me. Whatever."

Oliver just nodded, turning the page in the huge stack.

With a tiny sigh, Felicity turned back around and walked out of his office, letting the door fall closed behind her. This whole cold shoulder treatment was really doing wonders for her self-esteem.

Eventually the work day came to an end, and Oliver emerged from his office just as Felicity was shutting off her computers. They left the building and climbed into John's waiting car in total silence, where they continued to drive in complete quiet.

Every silent moment weighed on Felicity, as they got closer and closer to the mansion. Occasionally she would glance over, and he would be staring out the window, his chin resting in his palm.

She wondered what he was thinking. Was his mind still at QC? Was his mind fixed on Bratva matters? Was he plotting his next move against the Triad? Was there _already_ a plan in place, and he was trying to think through his next few moves, like a master chess player?

The car pulled up to the Queen mansion, and Oliver was out of the car quicker than she could blink. With a dejected sigh, Felicity slowly climbed out of the backseat. John was at her side in a second.

"That was a lively car ride," he said out of the corner of his mouth.

She snorted. "I swear, I'm going to go crazy from the silence."

His only response was a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder.

Once they got inside, Oliver made a beeline for his office, and John followed him. Biting her lip, she debated for a moment whether she should follow him, but the moment quickly passed. She'd worked hard to make herself indispensable to the Bratva captain in all aspects of his life — not just at QC. Just because she was confined to a bed for twenty-four hours didn't mean that had just gone away.

Besides, she was a goddamn professional. She had a job to do, and she was going to fucking do it.

She walked toward Oliver's office and rapped a few times on the door to announce her presence before opening it and letting herself in.

But the minute she caught the look on Oliver's face, it made her want to back out immediately.

"Felicity?" he asked, his voice coated with disapproval. "What are you doing here?"

She swallowed hard. "I — I just thought you might want me in on this," she stammered.

He shook his head slowly. "No. We're fine. You don't need to be here."

Roughly translated: get out. You don't belong.

She thought maybe that for a brief moment it was like some kind of sick joke. That he didn't actually mean it and he was going to shout, "April Fools!" at any minute.

But he didn't. He stayed in his seat, his expression not budging for a second.

Felicity shot an uncertain glance at John, who just shook his head sympathetically. With leaden muscles, she reached for the doorknob behind her.

"Right," she whispered. "Sorry. I'll just...see myself out."

The minute she closed the door behind her, she ran down the hallway, up the stairs and immediately barricaded herself in her room before anyone got the chance to see the tears that escaped.

Damn it, she thought angrily to herself, swiping at her eyes. Why did this hurt so much? Was it because of the way he was rejecting her or was it because of the kiss?

God, that stupid kiss. If she had any inkling of how much it was going to screw everything up, she wouldn't have brought it up. She would have just kept her mouth shut. She would have just gone along like nothing had happened, like she had been doing for a straight week.

It was one thing for that kiss to keep her up at night. It was something else when acknowledging that it happened kept her from doing her freaking job.

Felicity wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her forehead on her knees.

"God, this is a fucking disaster," she whispered.

* * *

The next day unfolded in much the same way. Oliver didn't so much as glance her way on the ride to QC, and the minute they got to the office, he slipped behind his desk and didn't leave.

Felicity had braced herself for a long, boring work day when halfway through her afternoon, the elevator dinged and out walked a gorgeous woman in a cream-colored business suit and heels sharp enough to gouge a man's eyes out.

She walked straight up to Felicity's desk, her brown eyes piercing. "I'm here to see Mr. Queen," she said. Her voice was quiet, but cold.

Felicity's eyebrows shot up her forehead. "Did you have an appointment?"

"No," the woman answered, flipping her long brown hair over her shoulder, as if things like appointments were beneath her. "Tell him Isabelle Rochev is here to see him."

The name immediately rang a bell in Felicity's vast memory. According to John's reports, Isabelle Rochev was part of the main cell out of Moscow. She was in charge of tracking the money brought in from the Bratva's various rackets, from gambling to arms deals to drugs.

Bottom line: she was Bratva. And Oliver didn't deal with Bratva shit during the day.

"I'm afraid Mr. Queen is busy right now," Felicity told her, inserting a bit of steel into her tone. "Perhaps you can wait until this evening."

Isabelle's eyes narrowed. It seemed that she wasn't the kind of woman who heard the word "no" very often.

"Fine," she snapped. "Tell him then that I will drop by his home later this evening."

"I will," Felicity replied coolly.

With that, Isabelle turned on her stilettos and flounced back out of the room toward the elevators, her hips swaying as she went.

Once she was gone, Felicity bit her lip, briefly wondering if she should go into Oliver's office to warn him ahead of time, but she decided against it. She was still Bratva business, and she didn't dare mention Bratva business at QC.

The work day eventually came to an end and Felicity found herself once again in a silent car on a silent ride back to an equally silent mansion.

Finally, she couldn't take the quiet anymore.

"Isabelle Rochev stopped by the office this afternoon," she said. She tried saying it casually, keeping her eyes forward. "She said she needed to speak with you."

For the first time in almost four days, Oliver turned to look at her. Actually look at her.

"I told her you were busy," Felicity continued. "She said she'd stop by the mansion this evening."

He didn't say anything. He just continued to stare at her with an unreadable expression.

"God, I hate her," John muttered from the front.

"Digg," Oliver said admonishingly.

"What?" John demanded. "You hate her too. All she cares about are the numbers. Every time she comes around, she orders everyone around like she's in charge of us. Not to mention, she treats you like a complete idiot."

"I'm aware."

"So what the hell is she here for?"

Oliver sighed and turned his head back toward the window. "I don't know."

Silence fell over the car again.

"Do you — " Felicity's voice came out in a rasp, so she cleared her throat and tried again. "Do you want me to sit in on the meeting with her?"

"No," Oliver answered. "That won't be necessary."

With a tiny sigh, she slumped back against her seat.

She was running out of ideas.


	14. Chapter 14

It turned out that John hadn't been exaggerating. Isabelle Rochev was a terrible human being.

And what was worse: she was staying at the Queen Mansion for the duration of her time in the States.

Felicity had the extreme displeasure of having to run into her first thing in the morning, on her way to the Queen's workout facility, out by the greenhouse. Felicity wore a pair of tattered sweatpants and grungy old SCCC shirt, her uncombed hair pulled up in a messy ponytail and the flyaway hairs held back by a tight elastic headband. Isabelle, on the other hand, looked like she just stepped off the pages of a Victoria's Secret catalog, in a burgundy silk negligee, the cups of her breasts lined with black lace. And, of course, her hair was perfect.

"Oh," Felicity said in surprise. "Ms. Rochev. Wow, you're — I didn't expect — I mean, what are you doing here?"

Isabelle's eyes narrowed as she glared at Felicity. "I should be asking you the same question," she answered coldly. "Aren't you supposed to be Mr. Queen's executive assistant?"

Felicity blushed. "I am. I just...extenuating circumstances made it so that I have live in the mansion. For the time being."

Isabelle's frown just deepened. "Don't you think it's inappropriate for a _secretary_ to be living in the same house as her boss?"

Felicity stiffened at the way she said the word _secretary_. She wanted very much to snap back that she wasn't just Oliver's secretary, but she couldn't even say that — the way he'd been treating her lately, she certainly didn't feel that way.

Instead, all she could say in response was, "It couldn't be helped." And before Isabelle could lob another accusation her way, Felicity turned on her heel and practically jogged down the hall to get to the workout facility.

While she was on the treadmill, she pretended that with each step she was crushing Isabelle's head with her feet.

And as she ran, she planned.

Oliver wasn't letting her into the Bratva planning meetings, which was seriously hampering her ability to do her job. And Isabelle Rochev was here, from Moscow. That had to mean something was happening. Maybe Rochev was trying to hand down an order from the main cell. Maybe she was checking up on things. Maybe she was here to help strategize in the war against the Triad.

Finding out why she was there wouldn't be difficult — after all, John was still in all the meetings, so he'd be able to keep everyone briefed. He was the scout; he was supposed to get all the information and pass it on.

But it was _her_ job to get close to Oliver. It was her job to get to know him, to get into his head and predict what he was going to do in any given moment to help the FBI to best develop a strategy to take down the Bratva.

Right now, she was failing miserably at doing her job. And if there was one thing Felicity hated, it was not being able to do her job to the best of her abilities.

She slammed her fist into the machine in frustration.

When she had finished her run, Felicity walked back to her room on her exhausted legs. Luckily, Isabelle was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Another silent day at QC passed, followed by another silent car ride back to the mansion. Felicity was starting to worry that she would lose her ability to speak soon enough.

After another solitary dinner, Felicity decided to bring a book out to the living room out by the foyer. Even though she wasn't in on the meetings anymore, she knew Oliver had a _boevik_ meeting. She wanted to position herself near the entrance when they came in, to see if they would say anything of note on their way to Oliver's office.

The first to arrive were Gold and Fyers. The two of them barely even glanced her way as they breezed right past her, but then again, she hadn't expected them to.

Sin and Roy showed up a few minutes afterward. They were talking to one another under their breaths, but when Sin spotted Felicity, her face broke into a genuine smile.

"Yo, Blondie," the younger woman greeted her. Felicity felt warmth and relief seep through her in spite of herself.

"Hi, Sin," Felicity answered. "Hi, Roy. How are you guys?"

"Good," Roy answered, reaching out to bump his fist against Felicity's. "But what are you doing out here? Why aren't you in the boss' office?"

Felicity grimaced. "Your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, the meeting's going to get a little crowded tonight. Isabelle Rochev is here."

Sin and Roy both groaned. "You've got to be fucking kidding me," Roy grunted.

"What the fuck is that uppity bitch doing here?" Sin growled.

"Maybe the guys in Moscow got tired of having her up their asses, so they sent her here to annoy us for a while instead," Roy answered darkly.

That made Felicity giggle.

"Well, whatever the reason," she continued, "you're stuck with her for the night. Sorry about that."

Sin and Roy exchanged wary glances.

"You're beyond lucky, Blondie," Sin muttered under her breath. "You don't have to deal with her judging glare."

"Oh yes I do," Felicity answered. "She's staying in the guest room next to mine."

Roy and Sin made identical noises of sympathy. With one last wave, they left her and walked toward Oliver's office.

With all of the boevik present and accounted for, Felicity went up the stairs back to her room. Once she was there, she grabbed her phone and plugged her headphones in. Then she opened the transmitter app on her phone and tapped into the secret wireless transmitting listening device she had planted in Oliver's office long ago, as a precaution. At the time, she'd been on good terms with him, so she never thought she'd need to use it.

Now, however, she was glad she did.

The first thing Felicity heard was glasses clinking and a low, collective, " _Prochnost_." Good, she thought to herself. They were just starting.

"All right, status report," Oliver's voice ordered. "Start with you, Gold."

A deep voice filled Felicity's headphones. "We haven't had any more trouble with the feds. The flow has been steady, and last week we had net profits of $16 million."

Felicity felt guilt well up within her. In her horror over Vertigo's side effects, she had persuaded Lyla and Waller to start going after the lines of supply prematurely. The plan failed spectacularly — it nearly blew her and Digg's cover, and they had to shift suspicion to Ivo because of it.

She didn't shed any tears over the horrible man's death, but she felt responsible for the failed plan they had to abandon. Which meant more and more people were getting hooked on Vertigo and more and more people were dying because of her.

Lyla kept trying to comfort her with logic. It wasn't like she was actually selling the stuff.

But it didn't keep the guilt from gnawing at her.

"Good," Oliver said in an approving tone. "Fyers."

A throat cleared and the man's gruff Australian accent filled Felicity's ears. "Our lines of supply are growing stronger and stronger," he answered. "In fact, we're close to getting the Yakuza on our side."

"Really?" Oliver asked.

"Yes. They've seen the addictiveness of the drug, plus they see the money the Bertinellis are raking in and they want a cut. They're willing to let us use their distribution lines for forty percent of profits, but I think we can negotiate them down to twenty."

"No," Oliver said immediately. "Fifteen percent is the most I will do."

"That's going to be impossible," Fyers growled.

"Then they can forget it," Oliver said. "Every day, more and more people are getting hooked on Vertigo and we are the sole suppliers. If the Yakuza wants to do business with us, they'll have to do it on our terms. You make sure they know."

A feminine chuckle followed his pronouncement, and Felicity felt a stab of annoyance when she realized it was coming from Isabelle.

"Well look at you, Oliver," she purred in a voice that could only be described as seductive. It made Felicity want to retch. "Just four months ago, you refused to deal Vertigo. Now you're talking about opening lines of distribution."

Sharp hatred surged through Felicity's veins. She talked as if the deaths of hundreds of people in Starling City didn't matter. She talked as if the steady loss of Oliver's humanity was a _good_ thing. God, how she wanted to run this bitch over with a van.

Thankfully, the Bratva captain didn't answer her.

"Roy," he said.

"The Triad's been laying pretty low ever since the hostage incident at the gala," he answered. "My sources are telling me that they put significant resources in trying to attract Blood to their side, and with him dead, all of his followers have broken ranks. It's going to take them a while to make their next move. They're at their most vulnerable, so I say if we're going to make any moves, now is the perfect time to do it."

"You're right," Oliver said. There was a grim kind of triumph in his voice, and it made Felicity's gut heavy with dread.

"So what's our first move, boss?" Roy asked.

Felicity heard a throat clearing somewhere in the room. Then Isabelle spoke up.

"Our strategy will be two-fold," she told the room. "First, we will take over their distribution lines. We will get their clients to make the switch from opiates to Vertigo, which will be a big financial blow to them. Simultaneously, we will start to target their lieutenants. They have three of them: Yao Fei, his daughter Shado and a man named Ben Turner."

Someone in the room made a noise of acknowledgement. "Ben Turner," Gold grunted. "Isn't he that freak who calls himself the Bronze Tiger?"

"Oh, right," Roy joined in. "The guy with the blades on his brass knuckles."

"Or bronze, as the case may be," Digg murmured.

Chuckles rang through the room.

"So if that's the plan, how are we supposed to get to them?" Sin demanded. "I don't know if you know this since you're not from around here, but Triad lieutenants don't generally just walk around out in the open in the middle of the day unguarded. That's why they've managed to stay alive this long."

Felicity couldn't help but laugh unkindly at Sin's open hostility toward Isabelle.

The woman in question cleared her throat. "You all will start tailing them for every waking moment until you have taken them out," Isabelle answered, her voice cold with disapproval. "And since you were smart enough to ask the question, Sin, you will be in charge of tailing and eventually taking out Shado. Thank you for volunteering."

Deathly quiet fell over the room, and even though Felicity was two floors above it all, she too was holding her breath.

Roy's incredulous voice was the first to break the silence.

"You can't be serious," he demanded. "Shado is one of the deadliest members of the Triad, second only Chien Na Wei. There's no way Sin can take her on by herself!"

"She won't be by herself," Isabelle answered coolly. "You'll be helping her, Roy."

Fury welled up inside Felicity. Forcing Roy and Sin to take on the most dangerous Triad lieutenant just because they didn't like her was reprehensible. How she longed to march down there and punch the stuck up harpy in the face.

The rest of the meeting went by rather quietly. No one seemed willing to cross Isabelle after she came down so hard on Sin and Roy — Gold was assigned to take out Ben Turner while Fyers volunteered to kill Yao Fei. There was a kind of glee when the Australian spoke up for his assignment, like he'd been looking for an excuse to hurt the old Triad lieutenant for years. The excitement in his voice made Felicity sick to her stomach.

The minute Oliver dismissed his boevik, Felicity pulled her headphones out of her ears and fell back on her bed, her arms pressed over her closed eyes. She knew to expect terrible things from Isabelle, but this...this was cruel.

She had to do something. But the problem was, no one was supposed to know that she heard every word of that meeting.

No one within the Bratva, anyway.

In a sudden burst of inspiration, she pushed her phone and headphones away to grab her laptop off the corner of her bed. She pulled the screen open and once her computer roused from its sleep, she hacked into the secure FBI server and pulled up her chat with Lyla.

 _L. I need help._

Seconds later, the letters appeared across her screen in response.

 _What is it?_

With lightning fast fingers, Felicity explained the situation. She concluded with, _Can we help R and S do this?_

There wasn't a response for a long minute, and she could feel herself getting more and more anxious with every passing second of silence.

Finally, Lyla responded.

 _Did you really just ask me to direct FBI resources to help two known Bratva operatives to commit murder?_

Felicity's heart sank at Lyla's response. But her handler was far from finished.

 _To answer your question, absolutely not. I am not doing anything that would facilitate the murder of anyone, whether it's an innocent or a Triad member._

Shame welled up inside of her. Shame and disappointment. Of course Lyla wasn't going to let FBI agents help Roy and Sin take out a Triad lieutenant. She should have known better than to ask.

But that didn't take away the feeling of desperation she felt at the thought of those two bright-eyed boevik trying to kill a dangerous woman by themselves.

Lyla seemed to have correctly interpreted Felicity's silence, because she continued.

 _I know this is your first undercover mission. I know that sometimes it's difficult to prevent yourself from feeling sympathetic toward the people you're supposed to be investigating and working against. But don't EVER forget that this is the Bratva. These are the bad guys. And if you need more convincing, just remember all those files you read and all the briefings you sat through before you took the mission. These are dangerous people, and the world will be better off without them._

Felicity sighed, and her head fell to her chest. With heavy hands, she reached toward her keyboard to type the two hardest letters she'd ever had to write.

 _OK._

* * *

Lyla must have told John about her conversation with Felicity, because the burly, undercover bodyguard pulled her aside while Oliver went into a closed door meeting with some QC investors.

"You don't have to reprimand me, John," she muttered. "Lyla already reamed me pretty hard for even asking."

"I wasn't going to reprimand you," he answered gently. "I was going to tell you that I felt the same way."

Felicity looked up so fast that she nearly gave herself whiplash. "You do?"

He nodded. "I've been at this a lot longer than you have. If you've gotten attached after only a few months, how do you think I feel? Roy and Sin were just kids who grew up on the streets, who didn't have any good influences to turn to, so they got caught up in some dangerous things. But against all odds, they turned out to be honorable. They never kill if they can help it, they refuse to sell their drugs to kids."

"So what can we do?" she asked desperately. "If we can't get the FBI to help us, we're screwed!"

"No, we're not," he insisted. "We'll just have to do this on our own."

Felicity snorted. "And how are we going to justify this to Lyla? Or Waller, for that matter?"

John shrugged. "It was part of my cover as Oliver's counselor. Besides, the Bratva aren't the only dangerous ones out there — the world will be a lot better without Shado in it, too."

She started to feel a seed of hope sprouting inside of her. Maybe it was possible. Maybe she and John could do this on their own.

He smiled a little at the relief he could see on her face. "He cares about them too, you know."

She looked up in confusion. "Who?"

"Oliver. After he dismissed everyone last night, I watched him lay into Isabelle for pulling that BS. He said it undermined his authority as their captain, but between you and me, I'm certain it was because he didn't want them to have that assignment."

"Then why didn't he give it to someone else?" Felicity pointed out. If he was their captain and if he did care as much as John claimed, why didn't he stop it? She was not only getting annoyed by Oliver's cold attitude toward her, she was getting annoyed that he stood by and let Isabelle take over.

"As much as he wishes it were otherwise, Isabelle's really the one in charge," he answered. "While she's in town, anyway. Anatoly sent her after everything went down at the chamber event."

She sighed. If she had known that night would have been the cause of so many problems…

"So how are we going to help Sin and Roy?" she asked.

"We'll figure it out once we get back to the mansion. They're meeting us there tonight at midnight."

Felicity nodded. If Oliver was going to keep on ignoring her — as he had been doing for the past few days — she'd at least be able to start working on a plan during her considerable amount of down time.

Once Oliver got out of the meeting, the three of them headed back to the QC building where he locked himself up in his office once more. With a sigh, Felicity took her seat at her desk and immediately started mapping out several plans to bring to Roy and Sin later tonight.

Later that afternoon, someone in the financial division called Felicity to ask her to come down and pick up some reports Oliver had to read. Once she got down there, she got caught up in some polite chit chat with Marty. She asked him how his wife was doing, and the older gentleman answered with great pride that she was doing a lot better, thanks to the wonderful doctors at Starling General.

After they said goodbye, Felicity walked back through the maze of offices to the executive elevator. She thought back wistfully to her first day as Oliver's assistant, when she asked him to sign a get well card for Marty's wife, and how he had so thoroughly surprised her when he gave her that P.O. box and asked her to surreptitiously forward all of Marty's medical bills to him.

It had only been a few months ago, but that Oliver seemed to all but have disappeared. Instead he was replaced by a monster she hardly recognized. A man who didn't care about selling dangerous synthetic drugs. A man who didn't care about sending his two most honorable lieutenants to their near certain deaths. A man who didn't care about any of the human lives he was ruining.

The FBI sent her to take down this man. This was the man detailed in all their Bratva files.

The problem was, she believed so fervently that the other Oliver was still there. And that Oliver, she didn't know how to take down.

Felicity got off the executive elevator and made a beeline for Oliver's office. Inwardly bracing herself for another sub-zero encounter with her boss, she knocked gently on the door before swinging it open.

"Oliver, I — "

But the sight that greeted her made every muscle in her body freeze.

Oliver was sitting in his desk chair, just where she had expected him to be. But Isabelle Rochev was sitting on his lap staring over her shoulder at Felicity. His gray silk tie wrapped around her hand, and her dark burgundy lipstick was smeared across her mouth.

The rest of it, Felicity found on Oliver's face.

"Can we help you, Ms. Smoak?" Isabelle's smirk was a triumphant one.

The subtle emphasis on the word "we" in her question was like the final kick in the gut, the fucking turd cherry to top the shit sundae. Felicity felt every single muscle in her body go cold, and her brain separated itself from the rest of her, like it was having way too much difficulty trying to process what it was seeing.

After a long, stunned silence, she finally answered.

"I was just bringing by some reports the financial division wanted you to read," she said mechanically. Somewhere, in the back of her disconnected brain, she felt immense relief that her tone didn't betray her feelings.

It might have helped that she didn't even _know_ what she was feeling.

Oliver shifted in his seat in a way that forced Isabelle to slide off. He straightened the knot in his tie and leaned forward over his desk.

"Go ahead and leave them here with me," he told her, his voice completely smooth. "I'll get to them later."

As if on autopilot, she walked forward and set the files down on the corner of his desk, trying as hard as possible not to make eye contact with him or Isabelle. Once she had completed her task, she fled his office back to the sanctuary of her desk.

It was weird that just seconds ago, she had been reminiscing about the good, kind and generous Oliver she'd met in her first few days under his employ.

Now, she started to doubt whether that Oliver even existed anymore.


	15. Chapter 15

"I would like once again to state how much I disagree with this plan."

Felicity rolled her eyes, but made no other reaction. Since they came up with the plan, Roy had to state his disagreement at least five times a day. It was no surprise to anyone that, right as they were about to carry out the damn thing, he was kicking up a fuss again.

"Shut up, Roy," Sin hissed into the comms. Felicity heard a muffled smack and Roy's howled protest.

"Both of you, can it," John's authoritative voice commanded. "Felicity, how are you doing?"

Considering she was walking in boots she'd dug up from five years ago and all the holes in her nose and lip were still itching after being reintroduced to foreign metals, pretty dang uncomfortable, to say the least.

"Fine," she answered in a short, clipped tone. She hadn't run into anyone as she walked down the street, but she couldn't take the risk of looking or sounding like she was talking to herself.

"Remember, we're right here if you need us," he reminded her. "You're going to be great."

She wished she had just one-tenth of John's confidence. Then again, this whole plan had been her idea, so she had only herself to blame for her own nervousness.

When she sat down with Roy, Sin and John earlier that week to come up with a plan to take out Shado, they all agreed that the first step to any assassination attempt had to be tracking her movements for at least a week. But since that required a lot more manpower than they had, they knew that their best bet was somehow planting a tracker on her.

How to accomplish this had been the subject of lengthy debate. Then Felicity suggested someone infiltrate the underground gambling racket Shado ran every Thursday evening, deep in Triad territory. It was the only place they were guaranteed they would run into her.

But the other three were far less agreeable when Felicity suggested she should be the one to go in and plant the tracker.

"Absolutely not," John said automatically.

"Forget it, that's suicide," Sin added.

"No offense, Blondie, but someone like you doesn't really belong in a place like that," Roy told her, shaking his head.

Felicity shoved aside her annoyance at the three of them. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but the fastest way to get taken to the boss at an underground casino is to get caught cheating, correct?"

The three of them didn't say anything, wary of where she was trying to lead them.

"Well guess what? I practically grew up at a casino. And I can count cards."

Sin's eyebrows shot up her forehead. "Seriously?"

As if to prove it, Felicity pulled out a deck of cards she had shoved in the bottom of her purse and gave it to Sin. "Deal it. Five hands for me, one for you."

Sin did as she asked. Once she was finished, Felicity immediately counted the numbers in her head. "OK, hit on these three. Twice on this one."

Once the cards were dealt, Sin flipped over her card and stared in disbelief.

Felicity had indeed won five times over.

"I'm telling you," she insisted. "I can do this."

Roy still wasn't convinced. "The Triad still knows who you are. Between your hair and your style, you're not exactly inconspicuous."

"I can disguise myself more effectively than you can," she pointed out. "Besides, I didn't always used to...look like this."

Felicity clenched her fist, but it was the only outward betrayal of the stab of pain she felt. There was a very distinct reason why she didn't dress the way she used to anymore. But if it meant helping Roy and Sin, she'd go back, at least for a little while.

John, knowing all about her past, had finally reluctantly agreed, under the provision the four of them would be connected by comms the entire time. He would be waiting outside the building, hiding on a fire escape while Roy and Sin would be parked a block away. At the first sign of distress, the three of them would storm the place and get Felicity out of there.

With her hands shoved into the pockets of her leather jacket and her long black hair (colored with temporary dye) flowed out behind her. She looked exactly like she belonged in this kind of setting.

Revisiting this getup gave birth to a complicated mix of emotions, but chief among them was pain. It reminded her of a simpler time, when all of life and all of her problems were uncomplicated — black and white. She had just been a young, bright kid, too smart for her own good and deeply in love with a guy who would later introduce all the gray in her life and leave her in shambles.

Felicity tried really, really hard not to think of how similar that seemed to her life at the moment.

With quick strides, she walked up to the nondescript door. She rapped on it smartly and a panel slid open to reveal a pair of black eyes.

"Password?"

"Snapdragon," Felicity answered.

The panel slid shut, and a second later the door swung open to admit her.

She walked forward, into the darkened hallway. It led into a huge room, still dimly lit, but filled with blackjack tables, roulette wheels, poker tables and even a few slot machines lining the walls.

"What do you see?" John asked.

Felicity did a quick sweep of the room. "Ten guards stationed around the perimeter," she muttered. "Armed. Obviously."

"Exits? Entrances?" he pressed.

"Just the way I came in. And one door in the southeast corner. Probably where Shado is."

"Got it. Keep your eyes peeled."

Felicity found an open seat at a blackjack table on the far right side of the room and immediately took it. She pulled a wad of cash tucked between her cleavage and slammed it onto the table. "Deal me into the next hand," she said with a bored voice.

Without another word, the man took the cash and pulled the rubber band off of it to count it. When he was done with that, he started stacking up chips and slid them over to Felicity's side.

The plan was for her to get caught cheating. To do that, she had to get their attention, and fast.

As the four other people at the table threw their chips forward, Felicity stacked five ten-thousand chips and pushed them forward. She could feel everyone's shocked eyes on her, but she ignored them.

The dealer began the hand. Taking a glance down the table at everyone else's hands, she wordlessly tapped on the ten and five stacked in front of her. Sure enough, the dealer tossed the card over and revealed a six.

"Wow," the man next to her intoned. "Congratulations!"

Felicity ignored him.

She continued to bet fifty thousand each time, and she continued to win. After a couple hands, everyone at the table stopped playing and just watched her silent battle with the dealer. With each round, the group around her cheered.

It wouldn't be long now, she thought to herself.

Soon enough, she had a million dollars worth of chips stacked in front of her and what surely was half the casino cheering her on. Just when she was about the win another fifty thousand, she felt a hand come down on her shoulder. Even though she'd been expecting it, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Miss, will you please come with us?" a rough voice whispered in her ear. Felicity had to physically stop herself from shuddering.

"I'm in the middle of something," she drawled, keeping her eyes on the cards in front of her.

"This is not a request," the menacing voice growled.

Her hands clenched and she swallowed hard, like she was trying to force her fear down her esophagus as well. Without another word, she stood and made to start stuffing the chips into her bag.

"Leave the chips," the man demanded.

She did as she was told and stepped away from the table. The minute she did, the hand still on her shoulder tightened and pushed her forward. She stumbled a little on her boots, but she righted herself quickly and followed the guards toward the same door she'd made note of earlier.

It opened to reveal a dimly-lit office. The decor wasn't exactly what she had expected of a Chinese mob boss — it was surprisingly minimalistic, with wooden furniture and very few decorations. In fact, the part of the room that drew the eye the most was the woman sitting behind the desk. She had her arms crossed over her chest, watching Felicity's approach with the kind of interest one might reserve for a particularly disgusting bug. The desk in front of her was empty save for a laptop, a lamp and a cellphone.

Felicity's eyes immediately zeroed in on the cellphone. It was exactly what she was looking for.

Now she just had to figure out how to get to it before they chopped off her hands.

She was thinking hard in her head, mapping everything and everyone in that room with her photographic memory. The only way in was the door she came in through, so if Roy and Sin and John were going to come swooping in to save her, they'd have to storm the place head on. That essentially was suicide.

But maybe there was a way.

The guards pushed her forward and forced her into the seat in front of Shado. For appearance's sake, Felicity shot the two men an annoyed glare before turning back forward.

"Can I help you?" Felicity demanded flatly.

"Careful," Roy warned in her ear. "You don't want to make her mad."

She ignored him.

Shado raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "My men tell me you've had quite a streak of luck at the blackjack tables."

Felicity didn't answer, waiting for the other woman to make the accusation.

"In fact, it's a little suspicious, don't you think?" she continued. "Making a million dollars in just half an hour?"

Felicity shrugged. "I got lucky."

Shado frowned. "My men think otherwise. My men are convinced that you were counting cards."

She clinged to her character. It was all she had that would keep her from showing fear, and it was imperative that she did not crack in front of these people.

"Can they prove it?" Felicity smirked. "Because the only way you could is if _they_ were counting cards, and frankly, judging by the looks of your men here, counting to ten without the use of their fingers would be a bit of a chore."

The men on either side of her scowled and started flexing menacingly.

"Felicity," John growled into her comms.

But Shado cracked a smile. "You have a lot of nerve to come in here, count cards and insult my men right in front of them," she said conversationally.

There wasn't a question in there, so she decided it was a good time to change the subject.

"Would it kill you guys to get some windows in this place?" she said, praying the others were paying attention to what she was saying. "No offense or anything, but the whole dungeon lighting here isn't the most inviting thing. Besides, what happens when there's a power outage? You guys are screwed."

Shado's eyebrows furrowed, her smile disappearing almost as quickly as it came. "Our lighting should really be the least of your worries."

Felicity shrugged. "Just saying. You guys could find yourself in a lot of trouble one of these days, all because of a stupid thunderstorm."

John made a noise of understanding. "Roy, Sin, I'm going to take the power out to the city block. Once I do, you storm in and get Felicity. Felicity, will you have enough time to plant the tracker? Cough if the answer is yes."

She made a tiny cough.

"Good. Keep them talking for a few minutes while I find the generator."

"The question now remains, what to do with you," Shado said conversationally. "We don't take to card counters very kindly."

"Once again, can you _prove_ I was counting cards?"

The Triad lieutenant gave a menacing smile that sent terrified chills through Felicity's body. "You seem to be under the impression that we need proof." Then she motioned to one of the guards.

In one swift movement, he grabbed Felicity's right hand, jerked her forward and slammed the length of her arm across Shado's empty desk.

This was it, she thought to herself in a mix of fear and triumph. Her outstretched hand was just six inches away from that cellphone. She could grab it once John cut the power.

Hopefully he could cut the power before the Triad chopped off her hand.

"Let us show you how little we care about something as trivial as proof," Shado sneered.

Felicity had coiled within herself, getting ready to fight them off if she needed. But right as she was about to leap onto the desk and yank her arm away, everything disappeared into pitch blackness as the lights went out.

"What the fuck?" one of the guards demanded.

In the shock, Felicity yanked her arm out from under the slackened grip and with reaching hands, she snatched up the Shado's cellphone. With shaking fingers, she unstuck the transparent and microscopic tracker from the back of the pendant on her choker and pressed it against the back of the phone.

"Secure the girl!" Shado commanded.

Felicity took that as her cue to get the fuck out of there. Putting the phone back as soundlessly as she could, she immediately turned tail and made for the door.

There were times when a photographic memory was an annoyance, but this most certainly was _not_ one of them. Using her picture perfect recall, she navigated her way through the pitch black room, dodging the tables and the sounds of scuffles and the stray gunshot here and there, all the while straining her ears for any sounds of people pursuing her from behind.

"Felicity!" she heard Roy hiss in her comms. "Where are you?"

"I'm running toward the entrance," she panted back. "Where are you?"

"We're taking out the guards at the entrance," Sin grunted back.

She saw light twenty yards ahead of her, and she knew it was the light of the street just outside. Her heart leapt when she saw two figures struggling with hulking shadows, but they seemed to be holding their own.

"I see you!" Felicity shouted. "Let's go!"

With a grunt, Roy shoved at the guard he was battling and landed a knockout kick right across the man's face. Sin, on the other hand incapacitated her guy by slamming his head into the wall behind him.

A burst of speed forced Felicity's feet forward. When the two boevik spotted her, they each grabbed one of her arms and together, they bolted out of the building.

"Digg, we're out!" Roy shouted. "We're headed toward the car, meet us at the rendezvous point!"

"Copy that," John answered.

Felicity didn't dare look behind her until they reached the car. Once they were safely in the vehicle, Roy put the car in drive and peeled out of the spot, hoping to out drive any pursuers. A few of the Triad men tried to follow on foot, shooting their guns after them, but it was no use — they were already too far away.

Roy didn't slow down until he got to the alley between Twelfth and Eleventh streets. There, John was waiting in the decoy vehicle, and the three of them fled their car and got into Digg's. Once they were all settled, John drove away.

"Did you get it?" John asked from the driver's seat. "Did it work?"

Felicity pulled her phone out of her pocket and pulled up the remote tracking program. She went through the prompts and activated the undetectable tracker she stuck on the back of Shado's phone. A few seconds later, a satellite map of Starling City appeared on her screen and a tiny neon green dot appeared, right at the site of the Triad's underground casino they just escaped.

She slumped backward into the seat, relief washing through. "Yes," she sighed. "It worked."

"Yes!" Roy shouted triumphantly from the passenger seat. "Felicity, that was fucking awesome!"

"Yeah, no kidding!" Sin added, reaching across the backseat to punch her on the shoulder. "You kept so fucking cool throughout the whole thing! And the whole power outage! Goddamn brilliant!"

Felicity smiled weakly. All her bravado had left her the minute she fled the casino. Now all she had left was a bloodstream of fading adrenaline and shaky relief. "I'm really surprised I didn't puke everywhere," she admitted.

"Nah," Sin shook her head with a huge grin. "You're too tough for that. Remind me never to underestimate you again, Bondie."

"Yeah, you've got a real gift for undercover shit," Roy laughed. "We should get you to do more shit like this!"

Felicity caught John's gaze in the rearview mirror, and she immediately looked away to hide the conspiratorial smile that was threatening to take over her face.

* * *

The minute they got back to the mansion, Roy and Sin said their goodbyes, promising to check in with them the next day to discuss the next step of the plan. They climbed into Roy's beat up car and disappeared down the winding driveway of the Queen mansion.

Once they were gone, John and Felicity climbed the steps of the mansion together, and the only thing Felicity could think of was climbing into her bed and passing out for possibly a century.

Unfortunately, no such reprieve was possible.

Once they walked through the front door, one of the footmen guarding the entrance said in his deep, mechanical voice, "Miss Felicity, I've been told that once you get home, the boss would like to see you in his office."

She exchanged a puzzled glance with John, who only shrugged in response.

This didn't sound like it would be good.

With a tiny sigh, she nodded and walked through the foyer toward the hallway, leading to Oliver's office. It had been so long since she had been inside of it that if it hadn't been for her photographic memory, she was sure she had forgotten what it looked like.

Inwardly bracing herself, she knocked on the door.

"Come in," Oliver's muffled voice commanded.

She let herself into the office, and she noticed with some relief that he was alone. Isabelle was nowhere to be seen.

The memory of walking into Oliver's office to see him with that...that _woman_...still had the effect of a punch to her gut. It made her almost resentful of him, and she clinged to that feeling as she walked into the lion's den.

"I was told you wanted to see me," she said flatly.

Oliver turned to face her, and his eyebrows shot up his forehead at the sight of her. Belatedly, Felicity remembered how she was dressed.

"What the hell are you wearing?" he demanded.

She rolled her eyes. "Is that why you called me in here? To criticize my wardrobe?"

His eyes narrowed. "No, but you can't just walk in here with your hair and clothes all dyed black and not expect me to ask questions. So again, I ask, what the hell are you wearing?"

Felicity crossed her arms across her chest. It must have been something about her outfit — it brought back the chip-on-her-shoulder attitude she had from her youth. "Last time I checked this was a free country," she sneered. "Meaning I'm free to wear whatever I want."

She saw the tick in his jaw and she felt a surge of vindictive pleasure. "Fine," he spat. "Then where were you tonight?"

"Out," she shot right back. "What are you, my father?"

"Felicity," he started warningly.

She clenched her fists. She hated how he said her name. It did things to her — it unlocked parts of her she thought had gone long dormant. It made her want to hit him, scream at him, shove him against the wall and kiss him.

It was unnerving.

"Fine," she bit out. "If you must know, I went with Sin and Roy and John to a Triad casino to plant a tracker on Shado's phone."

Well that certainly caught his attention.

His jaw dropped and his eyes widened as he struggled to process the information. "You — " he sputtered. "You — you did _what_?"

"I. Planted. A. Tracker. On. Shado's. Phone," she said in clipped, short words. She spoke in a tone that questioned his mental capacity.

Oliver's face turned red. "What the hell were you thinking!" he shouted. " _You_? _You_ planted the tracker? Have you lost your mind?!"

"I'm still alive, if you haven't noticed," she retorted, trying not to let his incredulity hurt her.

He waved that aside, like it didn't matter. "Felicity, that was _incredibly_ reckless of you! It wasn't just reckless, it was stupid!"

She bristled. These were the same words he used when he yelled at her for disarming the bomb at the auction, and she was getting really tired of Oliver underestimating her.

"Well I wasn't going to just stand aside and let Roy and Sin walk into a suicide mission without trying to tip the scales in their favor," she shot.

"Cut it out, Felicity," he growled. "You didn't do this for Roy and Sin! You were doing this to get my attention! You got mad because you saw Isabelle and me, and you — you went and did something stupid and reckless _again_ because you were mad at me, which is just about the most idiotic reason ever for you to risk your life! You're supposed to be smarter than this!"

Everything in Felicity's line of vision turned red as he lobbed his accusations at her, and all the rage inside of her tiny body had come to a head. It was like her anger, which started like a tiny spark had been slowly burning and burning for days. Standing in front of him, listening as he lobbed continuous insults fed that anger until it turned into a full-fledged blaze.

It was finally time to unleash it on him.

"Oliver Queen, you GIGANTIC ASS!" she screamed. "Are you _really_ so self-centered to think I did _any_ of this to get your attention? Are you really so small-minded to think I give a _shit_ about WHAT _YOU_ THINK?"

The door to Oliver's office slammed open and John stormed in, his face alert for any threats. In the back of her mind, she realized that her volume must have scared him or something, but most of her attention was dedicated to wanting to rip the Bratva captain a new one.

"Oliver? Felicity? What's going on?" John demanded.

They both ignored him.

"You're acting rashly!" Oliver shouted. "What else am I supposed to think?"

"YOU'RE APPARENTLY NOT THINKING AT ALL!" she yelled. She'd never been as angry as she was at this moment, but it was strangely exhilarating. She was finally letting it all out on the man she'd wanted to throttle for the past week.

"Felicity," John said warningly, but she ignored him again.

"The _only_ thing I was thinking about was Sin and Roy," she spat. "You let Isabelle just take over _your_ meeting, and the two youngest and most inexperienced of your boevik had to take on the most dangerous mission because you turned into a fucking log! You threw them to the fucking wolves and you didn't even think twice!"

"Are you implying that I don't care what happens to them?" he shouted.

"I'm not implying it, I'm flat out saying it!" she shot back. "You don't give a shit about them! You don't give a shit about _anyone_!"

"Felicity," John said again. His voice was louder this time, but she still didn't hear him.

"Believe it or not, Oliver, I didn't do this _for you_. In fact, I took a page out of your book: I decided not to give a _shit_ about you. I did this for Sin and Roy. I did this because I'm doing everything in my power to make sure they survive this at the end of the day, because _you_ clearly weren't going to do ANYTHING!"

Oliver glared at her with such fury that the part of her brain that cared about survival registered dimly that she should probably quit while she was ahead, but she shoved that internal warning aside. Her rage had become all-consuming, like a forest fire. It wasn't going to be contained until it had burned everything to the ground.

And it was time to deliver the final blow.

"Congratulations, Oliver," she sneered. "You've finally done it. You've turned into the captain Moscow always wanted you to be. The one who doesn't give a shit about anything or anyone. The one who doesn't give a shit about the people he kills — even if they work for him."

There it was. She watched with savage triumph as her words pierced Oliver's mask. A flash of intense pain crossed his face.

"Felicity, that's enough!" John shouted.

That made her finally turn her head toward her undercover partner. He was glaring at her with a combination of warning and worry that cut through all her rage.

"Go," he told her. "Cool off. Right now."

She blinked. Her ire was dying down now that it had consumed everything, and in its place it left a throbbing numbness.

Numbness that gave way to the growing regret at the agony in Oliver's eyes.

Without another word, she turned on her boot and marched right out of his office. It wasn't until she reached her bedroom that she finally let go of the breath she felt like she'd been holding. And with that breath, the last of her rage left her body.

Oh God, she thought with growing horror. What had she done?


	16. Chapter 16

In her desire to avoid Oliver, Felicity didn't emerge from her room for an entire day. By the time six p.m. rolled around, she heard a soft knock on her door.

"It's OK, Raisa," she called out. "I'm not hungry."

"It's not Raisa," a distinctly masculine voice called back. "It's Oliver."

Her heart pounded at the sound of his voice. Shit, she thought. This was it. She fucked up big time now. He was coming in to tell her that she was done. He was firing her. He was kicking her out of the mansion. She'd fucked up her mission and now Waller would never give her her freedom.

And she'd never see Oliver ever again.

She honestly didn't know which of those scenarios frightened her most.

"Can I come in?"

She bit her lip, frantically trying to think up an answer to his question. It was too late for her to make a break for it. She was trapped.

"OK," she allowed, straightening up in her window seat.

Slowly the door opened and Oliver peeked his head through the opening. His face was cautious, like he was encroaching on a lion habitat.

"Hey," he said slowly.

She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "Hey," she answered.

Something in her face must have emboldened him, because he took another step into the room and closed the door behind him. "Can we talk?"

Felicity couldn't trust her voice, so she just nodded. Inwardly, she was bracing herself.

Oliver grabbed the chair by the desk and pulled it up to face her. Once he sat down, he took a deep breath and began. "Look, I just wanted to say that...there was a lot of things that happened last night. And we need to talk about it."

She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. "Oliver, we really don't need to drag this out. If you want me out of the mansion, just say it."

A pause. Then, "The last thing I want is you out of the mansion."

That made her eyes fly open. She stared at him, but there wasn't a hint of irony in his expression. He looked right back at her, like he was trying to drill his sincerity into her brain.

"You...you're not kicking me out?"

"No," he said. "I told you. I want to talk about what happened last night."

Immediately she was on her guard again. Last night was a clusterfuck in the realest of ways.

"What specifically?" she asked warily.

He leaned forward very slightly. "Do…" he paused. "Do you really think that?"

"Think what?"

"Think that I don't care?"

Well he was certainly diving in.

She stared back at him, trying to gauge what he was thinking. His face was politely impassive, but there was just a hint of sadness in his eyes, like he was genuinely dreading her response.

Felicity thought hard about her words before she opened her mouth.

"I think...I think that ever since the gala you've been trying very hard not to care," she said slowly.

He nodded, like he'd expected that answer.

"And...and I think that ever since Isabelle came, you might have actually succeeded," she finished.

Her words must have surprised him, because his impassive mask slipped. His expression became so plainly sad that it almost made her heart break.

"Felicity, I…" He struggled to find the words and she sat stone still as he reached around for them.

"I'm sorry," he said finally.

In spite of herself, she could feel her body loosening. "That apology could encompass a whole lot of things," she murmured. "Just what exactly are you sorry for?"

"For everything. For...for calling you stupid and reckless. For letting Roy and Sin take on this mission without help. For sidelining you for the past few weeks when you clearly have proven over and over again that you're far more valuable than any of my other counselors."

He swallowed.

"For Isabelle."

She hadn't realized how long she'd been waiting for those words until he finally said them. Once he did, it was like smearing aloe vera over a bad sunburn — it took away the edge of her anger, but the burn still remained. Stripped of all her rage, all she had left was the unbearable feeling of rejection.

That was the crux of it. She had laid it all on the line just weeks before and he said no. He said no very firmly with another woman.

She tried to talk herself out of her intense hurt when she saw them together. She told herself over and over again that it was better this way. The last thing she needed was to get involved with a Bratva captain that she was sent to go undercover to take down. Obviously it was a blessing in disguise.

But the very last thing it felt like was a blessing.

She looked down at her knees, trying to piece together her thoughts. Finally, she asked in a hoarse voice, "Why her?"

She hated how her voice broke over the question. She hated how sad she sounded, how hurt she felt at the the thought of Oliver kissing her. How the memory of his handsome face smeared with another woman's lipstick burned her with such intense jealousy.

He had kissed Isabelle in almost the exact same place he had kissed her. She couldn't handle that.

Felicity was alarmingly close to crying, so she did the only thing she could think to do — she kept talking. "I mean, besides the leggy model reason," she said quietly. Yes, she thought. Focus on Isabelle. Focus on how much you despise her.

Oliver didn't say anything for a long while. When he finally did, his answer was far from sufficient.

"It just kind of...happened," he said. "It...it didn't mean anything."

She looked down again. Her nails were still painted black from the other night. She focused hard on them to distract her from her deep disappointment.

"Felicity," he said her name softly.

She took a deep breath before looking up.

"Because of the life I lead," he began very carefully, "I just think that it's better to not to be with someone that I could really care about."

Like who? she thought. Like her? Like Tamara in marketing? Like some woman off the street?

It was like he was trying to soften the rejection, but it didn't do that. Instead it just made it worse. Not only did she feel sorry for herself now, but she felt sorry for him. Sorry that he was imposing this bizarre rule on himself that made it that he had to live his life like a monk. Except monks didn't sleep with spawns of satan.

"Well," she whispered, to no one in particular. "Well I think you deserve better than her."

When she finally had the courage to look up, Oliver was smiling sadly at her.

"Thank you."

* * *

It wasn't like Felicity and Oliver's relationship went back to normal immediately after their talk. There were still so many things they left unsaid back there. They hadn't solved anything — they just came to an impasse, one they couldn't move past until the status quo changed.

But, at the very least, Oliver wasn't acting so cold toward her anymore.

It also helped that Isabelle had gone back to Moscow literally the day afterward.

And once he had gotten over his initial shock and after John, Sin and Roy told him about their mission in the Triad casino, he started regarding her more and more as someone who could hold her own, both at QC and in Bratva matters.

It was a weird mix of respect and awe, and Felicity didn't know if she should feel flattered or embarrassed.

Oliver started to sit in on the meetings John and Felicity had with Roy and Sin. They would always start with Felicity reporting where Shado had been, thanks to the tracker, and then they would try to start mapping a plan. They hadn't yet been able to identify any long term patterns (after all, it had only been three days), but it still helped them start to figure out what they were doing.

"So tell the truth," Roy insisted one night after they had finished discussing most of the business. "That getup you wore the other night — you've dressed like that before, haven't you? When I ran the background check on you, there was a bit about you being a goth for a while."

Felicity fell silent at his question. She had gone back to normal since that night: the dye washed out of her hair, the piercings came out and her clothes went back to their bright, happy colors.

"I used to," she muttered, her eyes trained on her computer screen. She didn't let her eyes stray from the blinking neon green dot because she didn't want to see the expressions on their faces. "A long time ago."

"What happened?" Sin asked. "What made you change?"

She clenched her fists. This was not something she wanted to talk about at the moment. Perhaps ever.

"Just needed one," she said shortly. Then she changed the subject. "I think she's down for the night, but if not, the tracker will make a log of her movements. We'll know more tomorrow."

And with that, she closed her laptop and fled Oliver's office to take shelter in her room.

It had been a mistake to dust off those clothes. They brought back a whole host of memories she didn't want anymore, memories she spent years running away from, and now they were catching up to her at a time when she needed every ounce of concentration to maintain her cover in a hive of killers.

Luckily, everyone seemed to understand that she didn't want to talk about her past, so they all dropped the subject from that moment on.

After a week of tracking Shado, Felicity finally could make out different patterns in her movements.

"There are some locations that we already know about, like the one out by the bay," Felicity told the group the night she presented her information. "This one we know is where the Triad lieutenants meet to discuss business and strategy. This one, on Lawrence and Market, is the casino she runs.

"But then there are the ones she visits frequently that we didn't have marked before. For example, I'm ninety percent certain that this location, the one on Noel Avenue, is her home. The satellite images show a house, fairly isolated, so I think it's safe to assume that it's well-guarded. It wouldn't be wise of us to go after her there."

"That's a good assumption," Roy said. "What about other locations?"

"This one, on Eighth and Berkeley, this is one she visits often as well. I can't tell from the satellite what it is, but she came here five times in the past week."

John leaned over Felicity's shoulder to look at the pin she put on the map. "That's not in Triad territory," he said. "We could canvass the area. Find out what it is."

"Good thinking," Oliver nodded. "We'll take two days to try and figure out what Sin does there. In the meantime, Felicity, you'll continue tracking her movements."

For the next two days, Roy and Sin and their associates tracked every single person who walked in and out of that building. It turned out it was a nondescript brownstone, housing three people, if the mailbox nailed next to the door was any indication. Felicity looked up the property records, but the only thing they could tell was that it was owned by a company called Brother Eye, and no one had heard of the company before.

Another problem they ran into: there was no way for Roy or Sin to get in and find out what was in the brownstone.

"We can't risk it," Sin explained. "People know us. They know who we are, who we work for. We can't risk news of our presence getting back to Shado and the Triad."

"So what do you propose we do?" Oliver asked. "We have to find out what this place is."

Roy turned to Felicity. "Well, we thought you might be able to go there undercover again."

Her eyes widened. "What?" she demanded. "Me? Seriously?"

"Yeah, why not?" Roy said with a raised eyebrow. "You were awesome when you went into that casino. Besides, no one knows who you are. No one knows what you look like."

"Shado does," she protested. "She got a real good look at me that night, and I'm willing to bet her memory is almost as good as mine."

"But we'll know if Shado is anywhere near the area, thanks to your tracker," Sin pointed out. "If we see her coming, we can warn you and tell you to get out."

Felicity bit her lip. Yes, she had volunteered to go into the casino. But she thought it would be a one-time thing. She thought she'd be able to put the leather jacket and the boots away for good after that.

She glanced over at Oliver, who was watching her with a very concerned expression.

"What do you think?" she asked.

He pursed his lips as he looked down at his hands. "I think," he began slowly, "I think it's up to you. But I also think it's a pretty good plan."

She sighed. Well, it seemed that she wasn't done with the boots just yet.

* * *

"How are you doing there, Felicity?" John asked over the comms.

"Still alive," she said under her breath. She tried very hard not to let her eyes stray to the car parked a block away, where she knew John was sitting in the driver's seat, his eyes on her.

"Let's keep it that way," Oliver said. She knew he was somewhere high above them on a nearby rooftop, keeping a bird's eye on everything going on. "Roy, Sin, are you guys tracking Shado?"

"Yeah," Sin answered. She and Roy were a few blocks down, skulking like young people were wont to do. "She's still on the other side of town. We're good."

"OK," John said. "Do your thing, Felicity."

With a big sigh, she took a step forward and walked toward the same brownstone they'd been staking out for the past few days. It was rundown, constructed from dull brick with a deteriorating overhang and boarded up windows.

The associates who had been staking out the building said that there was a really weird password system that, frankly, was kinda creepy — bordering on cultlike.

She pressed a black fingernail against the buzzer, leaned toward the intercom and said, "I want to see Checkmate, because I've been shown the light."

No one answered, but she heard the lock on the door click. She hesitated for the briefest moment, but then she twisted the doorknob and stepped forward.

"I'm in," she muttered into her comms.

"What do you see?" John asked.

Felicity looked around. She had stepped into a foyer that led into a big, empty room that she assumed was meant to be a living room. Beyond that was a doorway, where she caught part of a stove.

It was almost as derelict and rundown as it was outside. The interior bore no signs of people actually living there — there wasn't any furniture, no curtains hung over the windows.

"It's a foyer. It's dark — because all the windows are boarded up outside," she said. "There's...there's nothing here. No people, no furniture, nothing."

She moved through the empty living room, into the kitchen. There was a staircase in the corner of the room, and while there was a thick layer of dust on every single surface of the kitchen, there were none on the stairs.

"I think I have to go up the staircase," she murmured.

Oliver made a noise. "Proceed with caution, Felicity."

She took in a deep breath and started up the stairs.

She emerged onto a long hallway on the second landing. There were five doors, one on the very end and two on each side.

"I'm on the second floor," she whispered. "There's five doors."

"Which one do you have to go into?" Sin asked.

She looked at each of the doors, and the door on the right side farthest from her had light escaping from underneath it.

"The one on the west side, farthest from the stairs," she murmured. "I'm going in."

With quiet steps, she approached it and knocked gently on the door.

"Come in," a voice called.

She twisted the doorknob and pushed it open. But nothing in the world could have prepared her for what she saw on the other side.

It felt like the floor had fallen out from under her feet.

"Felicity?" he whispered, his eyes wide with shock.

He sounded exactly the same. He looked exactly the same. He sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by desks full of computers running lines and lines of code, looking exactly the way he did when he disappeared two and a half years ago.

He got up from his chair and walked toward her slowly, and Felicity stood, rooted to the spot. She couldn't move a single inch, even if she wanted to.

"Felicity Smoak," he murmured. "You haven't changed at all."

His hand came up to touch her cheek, but she flinched away from his touch. His eyes flashed with the barest hint of disappointment.

"Felicity, what's going on?" Oliver's voice demanded. "Who is it?"

His voice dragged her back to the situation at hand. She clinged to it, like her anchor in a storm of memories barraging her.

"Cooper Seldon," she said in the flattest voice she could manage.

The man himself smiled, the same cheeky grin that she had fallen in love with so long ago. Now it was just a bitter reminder of who she'd been and what she'd been through in the years since he left her.

"I knew you'd eventually find me, Felicity," he whispered. His eyes wandered over her face, like he was trying to discern that she really was standing in front of her. "You always were the most intelligent woman I'd ever known. And the most determined. And the most beautiful."

An angry huff echoed over the comms, but she was reeling too hard from the sudden reappearance of her biggest mistake to pay attention to who it was.

Her arms went up to cross over her chest, like she was trying to shield herself from his charm. "What are you doing here, Cooper?" she demanded.

He raised an eyebrow. "I would have thought that was obvious. You found your way here to Brother Eye. I am Checkmate."

She looked around the room, at all the computers, her brain whirring at a million miles a second. The way Cooper talked about it, Brother Eye was some kind of collective. Judging by all the technology she was surrounded with, it looked like a hacker collective.

Which, knowing Cooper as she did, shouldn't have been so surprising to her.

"I don't like this," Oliver declared. "I don't like _him_. Felicity, get out of there. Get out of there now."

"No, not yet!" Sin cried out. "We still don't know what this guy wants and what he's doing with Shado. Felicity, you have to get more information out of him."

Her fists clenched and she forced herself to remember why she was here.

"How long?" she asked. "How long have you been leading Brother Eye?"

Cooper shrugged. "How long has it been since we last saw each other? Two years? Ever since my narrow escape from federal custody, I've been living and working under the radar, continuing my noble work and finding like-minded individuals to help us in our cause."

She clenched her jaw, and a sudden fury flared up within her.

"You mean the narrow escape you made by throwing me under the bus and sending me to prison instead?" she spat.

A heavy, weighted pause hung over everyone listening to the conversation as Felicity's words sunk in.

But then something flashed over Cooper's face — it looked suspiciously like remorse.

"Felicity, you have no idea how sorry I am about what happened," he said. "I thought about you every single day since it happened. I promised that I would always protect you from the Grues, but then — "

"But then you turned out to be one of them," Felicity finished, her jaw still locked.

He sighed. "I'm not proud of what I did. But perhaps I can make it up to you."

"There is _nothing_ you could do to make it up to me," she growled.

He couldn't reverse the six months she spent in a federal penitentiary, sleeping on a hard mattress, eating nothing but slop and wondering why the man she loved had left her life in shambles. He couldn't erase the two years of her life she was forced to work at the FBI, following the ethically questionable and morally ambiguous orders of a cold-blooded director who didn't care about her wellbeing.

He couldn't give her back her freedom or her innocence, and that's all she wanted.

Cooper smirked, and a mischievous glint sparkled in his eye. "But I am offering you something incredible. I'm offering you what you finally deserve. I'm offering to give you the world on a silver platter. It would be just you and me, together. We'd be happy, like we were. We'd be _free_."

"What the hell is this nutjob talking about?" Roy asked over the comms.

"If you think I'm going back to you, you're even more deranged than I thought," she declared.

He came up close to her, so close that their faces were just inches apart. His eyes bored earnestly into hers.

"Come _on_ , babe," he murmured. "You remember what my dream was in college, don't you? To redistribute all wealth so we could _finally_ free ourselves from the tyranny of the one percent. It was the dream I had for both of us. I wanted this so much, I wanted to give you this. A better world for us and for our children."

"I'm _really_ starting to hate this guy," Oliver muttered.

Felicity ignored him. "Yeah, your communist dreams were what got us all in trouble in the first place," she shot back, taking a step back from him.

"Yes, but this time our technology is so far advanced that the feds would never be able to catch us," he insisted. "And once those simpletons finally figure out what's happening, there's no way they can stop us."

"How?"

He smiled. "We've got very powerful people on our side."

It all suddenly clicked in Felicity's head.

"You've allied yourselves with the Triad, haven't you?" she whispered.

"Yes," he smiled. A manic glint flashed in his eyes. "The Triad are on our side, and together, we're going to bring down the wealthy of this city, and then we'll take on the whole world.

"The first on the list: the almighty Queen family."

It was the second time in twenty minutes that Felicity felt like her heart had stopped.

So this was what Shado was doing here. She was planning with Brother Eye to take down the Queen family, and by proxy, the Bratva.

"Felicity, listen to me," John's voice said urgently. "You've got to keep him talking, do you understand? You've got to get as much information out of him as possible."

She struggled to get her head back into the moment. You have a job to do, Felicity, she told herself sternly. Get it together. You can't lose it now.

"And how exactly do you plan on taking them down?" she sneered, her arms coming up to cross over her chest. "They're the most powerful family in the city. They run a multi-billion dollar company and they have guards up the wazoo."

"Well you see, Felicity, that's where you come in." Cooper smiled and walked closer to her. She forced herself to stay completely still, not allowing her muscles to flinch when he reached up to trace her cheekbone.

"Remember that super virus you wrote years ago?"

She swallowed and closed her eyes. She wanted to slap his hand away and run as far away from that house as she could. But Oliver needed her. That thought was the only thing that kept her feet planted on the ground.

"The one that gives root access to any infected server?"

"Yes," he murmured. "It was brilliant. It was uncrackable, and unbeatable. That virus is what we need."

"How?"

"We plan on infecting Queen Consolidated. We'll start small," he said. "We'll send an email to some lowly secretary who doesn't know anything about technology. But from there, we can infect the whole system, and by the time their pitiful IT department realizes what's happened, we'll have access to all their accounts."

Her eyes flew open and she glared at Cooper. "What makes you think I'm giving it to you? After everything you've done to me?"

He sighed. "Felicity, I understand that you haven't forgiven me yet, but can't you see how this is for the greater good? In fact, doing this can ensure a new start for you and me! Once we bring down the Queen family, we can escape this useless city and start over new!"

She shook her head. Yes, she wanted nothing more than to get out of Starling City and leave it all behind, but she wasn't doing it with Cooper. And she sure as _hell_ wasn't going to let him use her virus to upend the entire U.S. economy.

Not to mention there was one huge, glaring problem in this grand plan of his that he didn't seem to get.

"You've made a huge mistake," she declared.

He frowned. "What?"

"You partnered with the Triad," she snapped. "You think the Triad is going to let you do whatever you want after you guys take down QC together? You think you're getting out of this alive?"

Cooper laughed condescendingly, like he knew better. "The Triad can't touch us."

She knew better. "You underestimate them."

"You underestimate me," he answered.

"No," she shook her head. Then she stepped away from his touch. "I know just what you're capable of. I have the broken heart and ruined life to prove it."

Cooper's jaw clenched. "Does this mean you're not going to help us?"

"Never," she declared, glaring right at him. "I'm never giving you the virus. I'm never doing _anything_ to help you or the Triad."

His face twisted into an ugly scowl that made Felicity take another step back.

"Fine," he spat. "We've already got enough pieces of the virus that we can figure the rest out for ourselves. But be warned, Felicity — you better stay out of the way or we _will_ destroy you."

She turned on her boot and walked right back to the door, pulling it open. She glanced over her shoulder and shot her ex-boyfriend the most diabolical smile she could.

"Not if I destroy you first."

* * *

She took a few buses to get home, to make sure no one was following her and to make sure she lost any tail Cooper might have put on her.

By the time she got back to the Queen mansion, John was there to greet her at the front door.

"Felicity — "

"Don't."

John knew the whole story. He knew why she started working for the FBI. He knew pretty much every detail of her sordid past. But just because he knew didn't mean he had any idea what she just had to relive, and talking about it with him was the last thing she wanted to do.

"OK," he said softly, opening the door and allowing her through. "Well, you should know that Oliver's waiting for you in his office."

She sighed. "Of course he is."

He chuckled. "Good luck."

With heavy feet and a heavier heart, she trudged through the foyer and into the hallway to get to Oliver's office. She didn't even bother knocking this time.

He didn't seem to mind. Instead of looking annoyed when he looked up, his expression softened. It made a little bit of Felicity's anxiety melt away.

"Hey," he greeted.

"Hey," she murmured back.

She closed the door behind her and took her regular seat in front of his desk.

"Before you ask, I've already come up with a plan to protect QC's servers and IT systems," she began. "I can set up some dummy servers to trick the virus, strengthen the firewalls, coach any and all employees to be very, _very_ wary of any emails they receive from outside the company. I promise, Oliver, I'm not going to let this stupid Brother Eye organization get within an inch of your company."

"I don't doubt that for a second," he said softly. "But I didn't want to talk to you about that. I wanted to talk to you about...about that Cooper guy."

She gulped. Of course she had expected something like this.

That didn't make it any easier.

"He was...I met him when I was in high school," she began. "He was a couple of years older than me. Already in college. But I was so smart, I was taking classes at Las Vegas University for college credit by my senior year. That's how I met him."

Her eyes went down to her hands to stare hard at the black nail polish. But the tears in her eyes made everything in front of her go blurry.

"I know what you're probably thinking," she continued, refusing to look up. "A college boy taking interest in a high school girl? I should have run fast in the other direction. I should have seen that straight away. But you have to understand — my mother raised me by herself because my father abandoned us when I was little. I didn't think any man would ever love me, and here was this boy, this older boy. Handsome. Smart. Full of big ideas and big dreams. And he was paying attention to _me_.

"I fell hard. I fell hard and fast. He infected me with his big dreams. He made me believe that our system was broken, and the only way to fix it was to forcibly take what we wanted."

She tried as hard as she could to rein in her tears, but it was no use. They started falling in spite of her.

"I had a lot of college offers. MIT wanted me. So did Stanford and UCLA. But I couldn't leave. I didn't want to leave. I was so in love with Cooper, the thought of leaving him to go to an out-of-state college was just...it was just unthinkable. So against my mother's wishes, I stayed in Las Vegas, with him. I didn't go to school, I just got a job waiting tables like she did and spent my nights and weekends with Cooper. She was so disappointed in me."

Felicity took in a deep breath, trying to steady herself for what came next.

"It was two years into our relationship. We started hanging out with like-minded hacktivists, and soon enough, we were hacking into the U.S. Department of Education. I thought we were doing it for fun, but I found out he wanted to erase all student loan debt across the country.

"When I realized what he was doing, I immediately pulled the plug. Even though I agreed with a lot of his ideas, I was scared. I was scared of the consequences, scared of going to prison. I was scared of _him_ going to prison. It was the biggest fight we'd ever had.

"A week later, the feds came calling. They traced the hack back to us and they arrested us. When they interrogated me, I didn't say anything. I kept my mouth shut. But Cooper...he...he..."

"Didn't," Oliver finished for her.

A fresh wave of tears gathered. She closed her eyes and they fell freely down her face — she didn't bother to wipe them away.

"He told them it was my virus," she whispered. "He told them it was my idea. He framed me for the whole thing. So I went to prison and he didn't."

It still stung. Even after all these years, thinking of his damn betrayal still sent a knife right through her chest.

"What happened after that?" Oliver whispered.

Felicity sniffed and quickly swiped at the moisture on her face. This was where the truth ended and her cover began. She had to pull it together. "I was in for six months before I got sprung for good behavior," she answered. "They realized that I was just a kid, a scared one at that. I wasn't going to try anything like that again, so they let me out early. After that, I decided it was time for a change. I moved away from Las Vegas like I should have done years before, went to community college. And the rest you already know."

Silence fell over Oliver's office for a few moments. Then, in a swift moment, he got out of his seat and walked around the desk to crouch in front of her.

"Felicity," he murmured. He took one of her hands in his and he looked up at her with the eyes as warm and blue as the ocean. She felt like she could drown in them.

"What you did today was incredible."

She sniffed again, like she was trying to retract her tears. But she was able to at least give him a tiny smile.

"Thank you."


	17. Chapter 17

"Wait a minute, you did _what_?"

Felicity huffed impatiently. She and John had just finished explaining to Lyla and Waller what they discovered when she went undercover to find out what was going on in that mystery house, but Lyla seemed to be stuck on the fact that she had used a double cover to help the Bratva.

"Look, Lyla, I know what you're thinking," John intervened. "But we had to do it. It was part of our cover. We had to do what we could to help Roy and Sin."

Lyla's eyes narrowed at her fiancee. "You didn't have to send Felicity. Do you realize how _incredibly_ foolish you were? Letting Felicity take the mission? You both could have blown your covers! What if someone had recognized you? Oh, wait! _Someone already did!_ "

Felicity scoffed. "Just my good for nothing ex-boyfriend. And he doesn't know anything about my working for the FBI after I got out of prison, thanks to our intrepid director here." She shot a glance at Waller.

Waller's expression didn't change from its careful blankness, but Lyla's face twisted in fury. "He's the last person we want knowing you're out there! How could you possibly take this on without asking us first?"

"Because we knew you'd say no," Felicity answered, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

Lyla's mouth opened and it looked like she was about to spew forth another stream of furious ranting, but Waller chose that moment to cut her off.

"Regardless of whether you should or should not have gone in, what is done is done," she said smoothly. "The question now is how we proceed."

Felicity wasn't the only person in the room who was stunned by Waller's reaction. The cold FBI director wasn't one to leave a perfectly good, sanctimonious rant unsaid. And she often wasn't the kind of person who took sudden changes to the plan in stride.

"How does the Bratva plan on moving forward?" Waller asked.

"Oliver's first priority is securing QC from any cyber attacks," John answered. "Felicity's been working with the IT department to strengthen firewalls and create other safeguards."

"What about the Bratva? Is he securing their data as well?"

"Yes, but I've been working with Cisco to create a backdoor so that the FBI still has access," Felicity answered.

"But what keeps this Brother Eye group from finding it?" Waller asked, her eyebrows raised.

"It's completely undetectable unless you have the key, and only Cisco and I know the key," Felicity replied.

"Fine," Lyla said. Her mouth was still twisted in anger, but she seemed to be playing along for the moment. "What happens next, after everything's been secured?"

"Despite what Cooper thinks, we're certain that Shado and the Triad are only using Brother Eye to try and destroy the Bratva," John answered. "Once Brother Eye fails to do that, their partnership will dissolve and Shado will destroy their organization."

"And after she's taken care of Brother Eye, that's when we plan on swooping in and taking out Shado," Felicity finished.

Lyla looked deeply skeptical of the plan, but she didn't voice the emotions on her face. Waller, on the other hand, simply nodded. "Very well. Continue to keep us apprised of the situation and any changes to the plan. You're dismissed."

The four of them stood from their seats, but before John and Felicity could make it to the exit, Lyla stopped them.

"If you think I'm finished reaming your asses for going through with a stupid and foolhardy plan, then you both should think again," she hissed. "However, it seems that I don't have a choice but to accept it for the moment. But make no mistake, if either of you pull something like this _ever again_ , I will make you regret it. Do you understand?"

They both nodded. Satisfied that her threat had reached them, Lyla turned on her heel and walked away.

"Is it just me, or did Lyla and Waller just switch bodies for a moment?" Felicity muttered under her breath.

John's only response was a small chuckle.

Once they were safely back in the car, Felicity asked the question that had been nagging at her throughout the whole meeting.

"Waller was suspiciously cool with what we did," she said. "What the hell is up with that?"

"She understands that the Triad is as much a danger to Starling City as the Bratva," he answered. "Plus with this new threat of Brother Eye, she's probably thinking of how to take out all three of them without committing too many FBI resources and getting us all killed in the process. I'm willing to bet she's pleased with the thought of them all destroying one another."

Felicity sighed and she slumped down a little in her seat. "Should have figured it would be something like that."

She thought about the plan. She thought about the war the Bratva continued to wage against the Triad. That must have been why Waller hadn't moved in on arresting Bratva leaders yet — she was waiting for them to finish off the Triad.

The worst part was, Felicity was _glad_ Oliver hadn't been arrested yet. She was starting to dread each passing day, because it meant that the time was coming. And soon.

"Do you ever feel like you don't know what side you're on anymore?" she whispered, more to herself than anyone else.

But John answered anyway.

"All the time."

* * *

Felicity sat in on the next boevik meeting. It opened with the traditional toast, but the minute everyone had swallowed their vodka, Gold got right to business.

"Turner has been taken out," he said with unrestrained, malicious glee. "I took care of him a couple of days ago. He is no longer a threat to our organization."

"Well done," Fyers grinned.

"Yes, well done," Oliver echoed. Felicity looked over at him and she could see his careful Bratva mask fully in place. There was even a glint of something in his eyes...approval?

She shuddered. Seeing Oliver happy about someone's murder was disconcerting.

But then again, she could hardly say anything. Wasn't she helping Roy and Sin try to take out Shado? How did that make her any better than anyone else sitting her? How did that make her better than Gold?

"What about you, Fyers?" Oliver asked. "Where are you with your mission?"

"My associates and I are still staking out Lao Fei," he answered. "But we've come up with a plan — every Thursday evening, he eats dinner at a specific restaurant. One of my associates will pose as a waiter, and we will slip a fast-acting poison into his food. By the time his men get him to a hospital, he will be dead."

"When will you carry out your plan?" Oliver asked.

"This week."

He nodded. "Good."

Fyers turned a self-satisfied smirk toward where Roy and Sin sat. "What about you two?" he sneered. "How are _you_ coming along with your mission?"

Roy bristled. "We've come up with a plan of our own," he shot.

"Oh really?" Gold snickered. "Did it involve hoping Shado tripped over a crack onto a knife?"

It was clear that Gold and Fyers didn't think Sin or Roy belonged there. It was equally clear that Sin and Roy resented the other two boevik, if their scowls were any indication.

"Enough," Oliver said calmly. "I know Roy and Sin's plan. It's complicated and dangerous, but in the end it will work to our advantage. After they have taken out Shado, we will move forward in taking over the Triad's distribution lines, and once we have accomplished that, we can kill Chien Na Wei. Once she's dead, the Triad's presence in the Pacific Northwest will finally disappear. That is the goal. Do not forget that."

Everyone in the room nodded solemnly.

Once the meeting was over, Fyers and Gold stood from their seats to leave, chatting lowly to themselves as they walked out the door. Once they were gone, Roy and Sin huddled closer to Oliver, Felicity and John.

"My associates have been staking out the Brother Eye house for the past two days, marking every single person going in and out," Roy began. "Shado's been there three out of the past four days, and they've noticed two other guys they're sure are also Triad."

"From what we can tell, thanks to that long-range listening device Felicity built for us," Sin said, sending a quick smile Felicity's way, "they're planning the cyber attack to take place in two weeks."

Oliver nodded. "Felicity, where are we on security?"

"I've already fortified QC's firewalls and set up the dummy servers," she said. "I'm going to meet with the IT department tomorrow to give them a rundown of the new security protocols. Then I'm sending a companywide email that will do two things: first, it will warn all the recipients to be wary of any suspicious emails. Second, it will plant every computer with an antivirus program that will hopefully ward off anything Brother Eye tries to attack us with."

"What about Bratva information?" Oliver asked.

"I've got all of it covered," she nodded. "We're as prepared as we can be."

He gave her one of his rare smiles, and it made her pulse race.

"Good. Now, on the night of the attack, Roy, Sin and John will be staking out the building. Felicity, you and I will be at QC to make sure they don't get past our firewalls. If all goes according to plan, Shado will kill Brother Eye in her rage when their plan fails. Once she has done that, Roy and Sin will take out Shado."

The two boevik in question nodded, but Felicity could see their faces were paler than usual.

"With any luck, we will be rid of these lieutenants in two weeks."

When Roy and Sin left, John excused himself for the evening. It left Felicity and Oliver alone in his office.

"Just out of curiosity," Felicity said, looking for an excuse to linger, "was there any reason why you didn't want to tell Fyers or Gold about your plan to get rid of Shado?"

He sighed. "Come on, Felicity. Surely you've already noticed that I don't trust either of them."

She shrugged. "Well yeah, but I very much doubt that either of them are moles for the Triad. Or the FBI, for that matter."

"I know that. What I meant when I said I didn't trust them was I don't trust them not to sound the alarms in Moscow. If word gets back to Anatoly about the planned Brother Eye attack, he'll send more operatives down here. Both of them are hoping to take the captaincy away from me, and Anatoly just might do it."

"But you're making so much money for the Bratva," Felicity pointed out. "And you're in the middle of a war. What would be the good of switching up leadership in the middle of a war?"

Oliver sighed. "Anatoly's not...he's been doubting my abilities to be the captain, ever since the whole incident with Ivo. One more mistake and I could be out."

Felicity's heart started pounding with unexpected hope. If Anatoly took away Oliver's standing in the Bratva, he would cease to be a major target of the FBI. He might even be willing to turn informant. She could convince Lyla to give him immunity from prison if he could turn state's witness.

She wouldn't have to betray him in the end.

"Would that be so bad?" she asked. "If Anatoly took the captaincy away from you?"

He looked away, not answering.

"Come on, Oliver," she said, her voice almost pleading. "I know you. I know you hate having to take orders from him. I know you hate selling Vertigo, you hate the gambling and the trafficking and the prostitution. You hate all the killing and murder! If you weren't captain anymore, you could just walk away! You'd never have to look back!"

"Felicity, you don't understand," he said, his voice very clearly pained. "The Triad killed my father. I've spent the past five _years_ of my life seeking retribution. I've spent five _years_ looking for the chance to wipe them off the face of the planet! I can't just walk away from that now, not in the middle of a war with the same people who ruined my life!"

Tears sprang up in her eyes. Oliver's pain was written all over his face and seeing it made her heart break.

"I know," she whispered. "But Oliver, killing the people who ruined your life isn't going to un-ruin it. You're the only one who can do that. You're the only one who can un-ruin your life. You and no one else."

His eyes were red as he looked up at her, and he smiled the saddest smile she'd ever seen.

She swore she could feel her heart shatter into a million pieces.

"You did a good job tonight, Felicity," he murmured. "Thank you."

She could tell he was dismissing her, so she nodded. She knew when someone had had too much for one sitting.

"Good night, Oliver."

* * *

A few days later, Fyers reported that his plan to murder Lao Fei had worked.

"And then there was one," John murmured.

Roy and Sin's associates eventually nailed down a specific date for the cyber attack: it was a Thursday evening, when they were certain that everyone in the Bratva would be busy with other things.

Unfortunately, they didn't know how ready they were.

"Can you hear us, Felicity? Oliver?" Sin asked over the comms.

"Read you loud and clear, Sin," Felicity answered.

She was sitting at a desk in the basement of the Queen Consolidated building, where all the servers were blinking around her. She'd created a cyber fortress in her tiny little corner of the basement with three huge computer screens spread out in front of her. The one on the far left was monitoring the firewalls at QC. The one in the middle was monitoring the Bratva's firewalls, and the one on the right was tracking Sin, Roy, John and Shado.

"How are you three doing? Do you see any movement?" Oliver asked. He was standing behind Felicity, his eyes trained on the screen on the right.

"None yet," John answered. "But the lights are all on inside. The first time since we've started staking out the place. Tonight's definitely the night."

"All is well at QC at the moment," Felicity said, her eyes glancing over to the left screen. "They haven't made a move yet."

"Why do I have the feeling that all of the exciting stuff is going to happen on a computer screen and that none of us are going to get any action tonight?" Roy said sardonically.

"With any luck you _won't_ get to see any action," Felicity huffed. "With any luck we'll fend off their cyber attack, they'll kill each other off in anger and you won't get yourselves shot up."

She felt rather than heard Oliver's tiny chuckle behind her.

The screen on the left flickered and Felicity immediately turned her attention to it. "It's started," she said.

She watched the code flickering in front of her, her fingers flying over her wireless keyboard. She felt a small sense of satisfaction when she saw her firewalls holding up against the various attacks Brother Eye kept trying.

"Talk to me, Felicity," Oliver murmured behind her. His voice so close to her ear briefly startled her out of her focus, but she was quick to get her head back in the game.

"They're starting the first wave of the attack," she answered, her eyes trained on her screen. "They're trying to get past the firewalls."

"Trying?" he clarified.

"Yes, trying. It's not working."

Sin and Roy made noises of approval.

She watched in self-satisfaction as Cooper tried every method he could think of to get around them. She saw the emails, she saw the virus that ended up being remarkably close to the one she wrote so many years ago. But none of it worked.

"Nice try, Cooper," she muttered. "But not today."

"John, anything going on in the house?" Oliver asked.

"All's quiet here," he answered.

Unfortunately, Felicity's triumph was short-lived.

"Damn," she muttered under her breath.

"What?" Oliver demanded. "What's going on?"

"They made it through the firewall," she answered, her fingers furiously typing. "I don't know how he...I don't know how."

"Does that mean they're in?" he asked.

"Not necessarily," she said. "We've still got other protocols. The dummy servers, the antivirus programs I've installed. They'll never find the real servers."

But just as she said that, the left screen flickered to reveal Cooper, sitting at a computer, surrounded by a group of people. She could see Shado in the far corner, her arms crossed over her chest and grim smile on her face. The green light blinking at the top of her monitor indicated that just as she could see him, he could see her.

"Hello, Felicity." Cooper's voice blared not only from the speakers all around her, but also in her comms.

"What the hell," Roy growled. Her heart sank when she realized that Cooper had not only hacked her computer, but had also hacked his way into their communications transmissions.

"Cooper," she growled.

"So I suppose you really _have_ changed after all," he said conversationally. "And it's not just the hair color. Aligning yourself with Oliver Queen, of all people."

"I told you, I'm not doing anything to help you or the Triad."

"And I told _you_ to stay out of my way. But you didn't listen. And now, I have to destroy you and your friends."

Felicity froze.

"Yeah, that's right. I can see all the open channels on your comms. I can even track them. In fact, I see your three friends sitting just a block away." He turned to Shado, who was standing behind him. "I don't suppose they would be anything you'd be interested in, would they?"

The lethal woman only smirked in reply before pushing herself off the wall she was leaning on and gesturing to her men to follow her.

"Digg!" Oliver shouted into the comms, even though he knew perfectly well that Cooper could hear their conversation. "Get out of there now!"

"Like hell are we abandoning the mission," Roy growled.

"Felicity, just do your thing," Sin said. On the other end, she could hear the faint sounds of clicking — like she was loading her gun. "We'll take care of Shado."

"That is not wise," Cooper chuckled. "But it's not my funeral."

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Felicity muttered under her breath.

Cooper laughed again and she wanted so much to reach through the monitor and strangle him. "Forget it, Felicity. I've won this round. I've broken through your firewalls. They were impressive, but I got in. And now, Queen Consolidated is mine."

She was just about to retort, but she watched in horror as Cooper's virus continued to bypass her protocols. He navigated through the maze of dummy servers she had set up with ease, until he zeroed in on the right one.

"Felicity," Oliver whispered urgently. "What's happening?"

She couldn't answer him. She was still in too much panic. "How did you — ?"

"Oh, please," Cooper rolled his eyes. "Come on, Felicity. Don't you remember who it was who taught you the dummy server trick? And here you are, trying to use my own ideas against me. Haven't you learned by now that I'll always be one step ahead of you?"

Gunshots started ringing in her comms and Felicity almost jumped right out of her skin.

"Sin! Roy! Digg!" Oliver roared into the comms.

None of them answered, but the clear signs of struggle convinced Felicity that none of them had died yet.

Cooper's grating laugh cut through the noise of the fray. "In just seconds, Felicity, the most powerful family in all of Starling City will be on their knees. And you can do nothing to stop it."

"Felicity," Oliver's voice begged.

She held up a hand to shush him, then went back to typing furiously. She still had one last trick up her sleeve.

"You've made a huge mistake tonight, Cooper," she growled.

He laughed condescendingly. "And yet here I am, winning this battle. You can't beat me. I taught you practically everything you know. I _created_ you. You wouldn't exist if it weren't for me."

With one last keystroke, she completed her code.

"You may have taught me a lot," she conceded. "But I learned a couple of things on my own."

She watched the screen as Cooper's expression froze.

"When you breached our firewalls, you forgot to make your entrance untraceable," she grinned.

"What the fuck you are you talking about?" he demanded. But then his eyes widened when he saw the code trailing across his screen.

"I believe this was the virus you wanted all along, wasn't it?" she asked rhetorically. Then, with deep, vindictive satisfaction, she smashed the space bar on her keyboard.

A loud explosion rang into everyone's comms, and on the other end of the video connection, she watched Cooper and everyone else in the room disappear into a haze of smoke before the screen went black.

"What the hell was that?" Oliver demanded.

"I used the path he took to breach our firewalls to send the virus he wanted me to give him," she grinned. "I made his system commit suicide, and since he had a pretty big one…"

"It made an equally big explosion," he finished for her.

"Yep," she answered.

But there wasn't much time to revel in their victory. Roy, Sin and John were still battling a deadly Triad lieutenant, so she hacked the surveillance cameras near the area to pull up the footage.

"Guys, talk to us," Oliver urged.

"We're kind of in the middle of something, Boss," Roy grunted, and Felicity felt a wave of relief at the sound of his voice. "Can't really talk right now."

It was just as well. That was when the surveillance footage loaded, and Oliver leaned in closer over her shoulder to watch. Roy and John were each locked into a fight with two huge Triad goons, but Sin was fighting Shado on her own and it looked like the lethal lieutenant was very quickly getting the upperhand.

"I have to get there," Oliver growled. "I have to help them."

"Oliver, they're on the other side of town," Felicity told him, her eyes never leaving the fight. "By the time you get to them, it could already be over. There's nothing you can do."

"But I have to try!" he shouted. He walked around her chair, on his way out the door.

"Oliver, wait — !"

But a sudden shout over the comms caught their attention.

"No!" Roy screamed "NO!"

Felicity whipped her head around. She flinched as a gunshot echoed in her comms, and Shado hit the ground on the computer monitor with a soundless thud.

But it wasn't the sight of the lieutenant's lifeless body that had left Felicity frozen in horror.

It was Sin's.


	18. Chapter 18

**Phase Five**

The minute Oliver got back to the mansion, he made a beeline straight for his bedroom and grabbed the snifter of vodka off the drink cart in the corner. The first shot burned all the way down his throat, but it wasn't enough to burn away the memory of the last two hours.

Everyone had risen magnificently to the occasion; Felicity practically planned the whole thing by herself. Roy gave a touching eulogy. John gave the invocation as they scattered Sin's ashes into the Starling City Harbor.

Everyone did their part. Everyone except Oliver.

He couldn't handle it. He couldn't watch as one of his favorite boevik, one of his most trusted advisers went into the crematorium. He couldn't watch as John scattered the dust into the sea.

He swallowed another mouthful of vodka when he heard a knock on the door.

"Oliver? Oliver, are you in there?"

He didn't answer. Felicity was a smart girl — when he didn't answer, she'd figure out that he wanted to be alone.

"Oliver, whether you like it or not, I'm coming in," she said in a warning tone.

Or maybe not.

"Not now, Felicity," he called back in a hoarse voice.

She didn't accept that. The door opened and she walked right in, closing the door behind her. Her appearance was almost jarring — she wore none of her bright colors. Instead, she was swathed in a conservative black sheath dress and sensible black flats. She wore contacts, and there was not a speck of makeup on her face.

And yet, she was still one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen.

"Felicity, I want to be alone right now," he said. "I can't...I can't...I just — "

"Shut up," she insisted. She crossed the room to take the glass out of his hand and set it down. Then she grabbed his wrist and led him to sit on the edge of his bed. "I know you can't do anything right now, but being alone knocking back shots of vodka is the worst idea."

Oliver slumped forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands running over his face over and over. Felicity was sitting next to him, and the only contact she kept with him was a soft hand on his shoulder.

"She's gone," he whispered. "Sin is gone and it's all my fault."

"No," she murmured, her hand rubbing his back over his suit. "It's not your fault."

"It _is_ my fault," he insisted. "She shouldn't have been the one to kill Shado. I should have given it to someone else. I should have let one of the others do it. It should have been Gold. Not Sin. Not her."

His voice broke over the last sentence and tears welled up again. Sin had been through so much in her life — she was an orphan at five. She was shunted from foster home to foster home until she finally hit eighteen. She lived on the streets for years until she found her way to the Bratva. Until Oliver met her and took her under his wing.

"She was like my little sister," he said. "She didn't have anyone claiming her until she came to us. We were her family, and she was ours. And _I_ killed her. I killed my own little sister."

"No you _didn't_."

Oliver looked up and Felicity's expression was angry. "Stop saying you killed her because you _didn't_. You didn't kill her. You weren't the one who held the knife. You weren't the one that jabbed it into her lung. You weren't the one who gave her that stupid assignment. It wasn't you."

He closed his eyes and the in his eyes ran down his face.

"Then why does it feel like it was?"

"Because you're an honorable man, Oliver," she whispered. She slid off his bed and kneeled in front of him so she could look him straight in the eyes. " _You_ are an honorable man, and Sin was an honorable woman. You both are honorable people.

"But here's the thing," she whispered, a sad smile on her face. "Being a high-ranking member of the Bratva makes you think you have a lot more power than you really do. You're not a god, Oliver. You can't prevent every bad thing in the world and there was no way you could have prevented this."

He looked into her eyes, and for a second he saw it. He saw his own grief mirrored in her face. Her gorgeous blue eyes were swimming in tears, her eyelids red-rimmed and swollen.

It was instinct. He was driven by need, need to escape the loneliness. Need to outrun the overwhelming pain of losing Sin.

He got off the bed and gently took her by the wrists to guide her to standing. Then he pulled her in tight and pressed his lips against hers.

It was only the second time he'd ever kissed her, but he had dreamed of and imagined kissing her lips so many times that it felt like the millionth time. But it was just as incredible as the first time.

She was like a balm. Soft and warm, soothing his wounds and his grief as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and clinged to him.

In the back of his head, he knew this was probably not the smartest idea he'd ever had. In fact, if he'd been thinking clearly at all, he would have forced Felicity to get out of his bedroom so he could drown his sorrows in tumbler after tumbler of vodka until he fell into a drunken sleep.

But with his lips on hers and her arms around him, he couldn't help but think that she was much better than vodka would have been.

Without pulling away, his hands went to the back of her dress, searching for the tiny zipper. When he found it, he pulled it down the length of her back and pushed it off her shoulders so that it fell to the ground, pooled around her gorgeous legs.

Not to be outdone, Felicity brought her own hands to rest against his chest. Then she pushed his suit jacket off his shoulders until it joined her dress on the floor. Her fingers went to his buttons, undoing them one by one, and she slipped her hands to his bare chest, running her warm fingers over every inch of his flesh and he shivered in pleasure and delight at the sensation.

Bit by bit, the rest of their clothes fell to the floor until they were completely naked. Then Oliver turned them so that Felicity's back was to the bed. He pushed her backward, his body coming down on top of hers. He relished how it felt to have their bare skin pressing against each other.

Under any other circumstance, he would have drawn it out as long as possible. He would have kissed and licked and teased her until they were both on the brink with need. But this was not a normal circumstance. He was trying desperately to outrun his grief, and the only way he could, the only way that made him feel better was to lose himself in Felicity.

He rolled off her to retrieve a condom from his bedside table. Once he had it, she took it from him, ripped into the foil and beckoned him to come closer. With sure, strong fingers, she rolled it down the length of his hardened cock, forcing him to choke back a groan.

When she was finished, she fell back against the bed and spread her legs open wide for him. He positioned himself at her base, pressing his tip against her inviting folds.

But he hesitated. Yes, he'd been the one to initiate this, but this was hardly an appropriate reaction to his grief. He shouldn't have done this. He shouldn't have been forcing himself on Felicity, when all she expected was to comfort him while he cried.

He was about to pull away completely and tell her he'd made a huge, huge mistake, but Felicity seemed to correctly read his expression. She grabbed onto his arm and pulled him down closer to him. Then she pressed her open palm against his face, looking deep into his eyes.

"Oliver," she whispered, her tone soothing and her eyes inviting. "It's OK. It's OK."

She could have been referring to so many things, but their connection was so deep that he knew immediately what she meant. He swallowed hard and gave a slow nod. Then, very gently and very slowly, he pushed himself into her.

Felicity's eyes fell closed and a tiny sigh escaped her once he had sunk himself entirely inside her. Oliver's head fell to her shoulder, kissing the smooth skin he found there.

He remained where he was, giving her time to adjust to him. She felt so amazing, wrapped around him — it was unlike anything he'd ever experienced. There was need and desire, of course, but there was warmth. Comfort. It kept soothing the hard edge of his grief as he buried himself deeper and deeper inside of her.

Slowly, very slowly, Oliver started to move. His movements were shallow thrusts at first, but she started to meet his hips with her own, silently begging him for more.

He picked up the pace, matching her movements as he lost himself. All he could feel now was his grief and his desire until it melded and hardened into something new, an intense pain all its own, soothed only by Felicity's touch.

After a few minutes, he felt her come apart underneath him. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her head fell back, her back arched upward as her chest came up to meet him and her mouth opened to release a keening sigh.

His head dropped, and he buried his face into the space between her breasts. He kissed and nibbled her smooth skin as his thrusts quickened, drawing out her orgasm. Her walls clenched around him, and though the sensation was blunted by the condom, he could still feel her drawing him ever deeper inside of her.

And then he was falling. He toppled off the edge of an endless cliff, sending him into a freefall. He refused to let himself feel anything but the joy, the intense ecstasy as Felicity held onto him, pulling him, comforting him, soothing him.

When he was finished falling, he didn't slam into the ground as he expected. Instead he floated, gently until he landed back onto his bed, Felicity's body still wrapped around his. But the warmth didn't leave him; it remained, buzzing over every inch of skin that was pressed against hers.

"Felicity," he murmured. He brought his face up from her chest to kiss her lips. He wasn't ready to leave her yet. He wasn't ready to let his grief catch up to him.

"Oliver," she whispered back. Her hands lightly trailed up and down his sweaty back, sending shivers through his body.

When he had gotten his fill of her lips, he pulled away to look into her eyes. She opened them and smiled; the beauty in her expression took his breath away all over again.

He gently pulled himself out of her and discarded the spent condom. But he returned immediately to the warmth of his bed and Felicity's open arms. He closed his eyes as she pressed her lips against his forehead, whispering over and over, "It's OK, Oliver. You're OK."

And for the first time in five years, he fell into an easy sleep.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, Anatoly was hardly saddened by the news of Sin's death. Instead, he was elated at the news that all three Triad lieutenants had been killed.

"This is good news, Oliver," he said heartily. The captain's fist clenched on his knee at Anatoly's jovial tone. "Of course, it is tragic that we lost one of our own. But she died in service to our brotherhood, and that, I think, is something she would have been proud of."

Oliver didn't buy that for a second. Sin hadn't wanted to kill Shado in the first place, and now she was dead. He said none of this out loud, but instead glared at the speakerphone Anatoly's voice was blaring out of.

"Now that all three lieutenants are dead, is time for us to move on to Chien Na Wei. Once we have killed her, we will have finally destroyed Triad's presence in our territory once and for all."

Oliver's throat went dry as he looked down into his empty tumbler. This was it. This was the moment he'd been pursuing for five long years. When he looked back at the road that led him here, it was littered with bodies. All of it weighed heavily on him, but there was no turning back.

He would finally make those bastards pay for his father's death.

"I'm ready," he said quietly, his fist clenching in his lap.

"Yes you are," the older man chuckled. "I would not have assigned you such a grave task if I did not believe you could pull it off."

He meant to express confidence in Oliver, but the beleaguered Bratva captain knew better. If he failed the brotherhood, he would be disposed of, as easily as he disposed of Ivo.

"Very well," he said. "Once we come up with a plan, we will let you know."

"Make it sooner rather than later," Anatoly warned. "The Triad may be weakened, but we cannot risk them rallying."

"I have no intention of allowing them to rally," Oliver's cool voice replied.

Once they had hung up, Oliver stood from his desk and walked to the drink cart to pour himself another generous amount of vodka. It had not escaped his notice that since Sin's death, he had run through almost his entire supply of Russian-imported vodka.

He set down the nearly empty bottle with a sigh and made a mental note to order more with the next shipment of arms.

A quiet knock sounded at Oliver's door. His heart pounded at the possibility of who it was.

"Come in," he said in a voice that sounded a bit too eager.

The door opened and Digg walked in. Oliver struggled to hide his disappointment by taking another big swig of vodka.

"I know you have a conference call with Moscow tonight," Digg said as he took the seat in front of Oliver's desk. "I thought you might want me to sit in."

The Bratva captain shook his head. "No need. I already had it."

"What did he say?"

"Just that we need to come up with a plan for killing Chien Na Wei soon. We can't allow them to rally." Oliver paused to stare down into his glass. "He barely mentioned Sin."

Digg snorted. "Did you expect a glowing eulogy?"

"No."

The two men were silent as they contemplated their own thoughts for a few minutes. Then Oliver mind wandered, as it often did these days, down a path that led to his executive assistant.

"Where's Felicity?" he asked. He tried desperately to keep his tone nonchalant.

Unfortunately, Digg saw right through it. "She went out with Thea tonight," the counselor answered with a raised eyebrow. "Don't worry, they took footmen with them. They should be safe if they stay on our side of town."

Oliver nodded, though he couldn't quite mask the look of disappointment in his eyes.

Another beat of silence. This time, it was Digg's turn to break it.

"Is there something going on between the two of you?" he asked suspiciously. "Every time you two are in a room together it's...well, there's just a weird energy in the room."

Oliver shrugged. "I don't know what you're talking about. I was just wondering where she was."

"Well she's out. Do you want to see her when she's back?"

He shook his head. "No, no need. She'll probably tired when she's back. I'll just talk to her tomorrow morning."

Digg nodded. "Very well. I'll see you later." And with that, he walked out of Oliver's office.

Once he was alone, Oliver slumped back into his chair and let out a deep, heavy sigh. It had been two days since Sin's funeral. Two days since he had to say goodbye to one his faithful boevik.

Two days since he slept with Felicity.

He woke up after the post-sex doze to an empty bed. She must have snuck out while he was still asleep, but he didn't know whether to feel relieved or severely disappointed.

Since then, she had managed to completely avoid him. Sure, she showed up to work and performed diligently and professionally. But he couldn't get anywhere near her at the mansion. She stopped taking meals with him. She generally avoided places she knew he would be.

Oliver knew she was doing it on purpose. It was clear that she regretted what happened between the two of them.

And quite honestly, he didn't blame her. He also didn't know what else he could do to rectify the situation. Hell, he didn't even know what he _would_ say if she ever stuck around long enough to listen.

He could apologize. He could say that it was out of line. He could say that he didn't mean for it to go that far and that he would never do it again. That was all mostly true.

But he couldn't tell her that it didn't mean anything. Because in the moment, it might have been comfort sex, but when he woke up something had shifted inside of himself. It changed him completely.

He didn't know if that was the best course of action, though.

With another sigh, Oliver finished off the rest of his vodka and sent a communique to all his boevik via the secure channel Felicity had set up for them that he was calling a special meeting for Monday. Then he closed his laptop and trudged up the stairs to his bedroom.

With heavy, tired limbs, he changed out of his clothes and brushed his teeth. Once he turned off all the lights and the bedroom had plunged into total darkness, he walked forward and fell into his bed.

The pillow next to his still smelled faintly like her. Holding it tight to him, he inhaled and closed his eyes, pretending like she was still there. How he wished she was.

He must have fallen asleep just shortly after he closed his eyes because the next thing he knew, the sound of his door opening roused him from his slumber.

Turning in his bed, he squinted to see a small figure silhouetted by the light in the hallway. The door closed and his eyes adjusted back and he could make the figure out a little more clearly.

"Felicity?" he asked in confusion.

She didn't say anything. Instead she padded across the floor to his bed. He registered, in slight shock, that she was wearing a skin tight red dress, her lovely blonde hair drifting in messy curls down her back.

She climbed onto the foot of the bed and crawled toward him. Soon enough, her face was just inches from his and he could see the pitch black of her dilated pupils.

And then, her lips were on his.

His brain might have been operating on a surprised delay, but his body responded to her almost instantly. He could taste the gin that still lingered on her tongue, but like everything else about her, she somehow made it sweeter. His arms came to wrap around her and pull her closer to him until their bodies were flush and she sighed into the kiss.

"Oliver."

His name on her lips had to be one of the most beautiful things he'd ever heard.

She sat in his lap, straddling his legs, her arms wrapping around his shoulders, her fingers coming down to trace the muscles of his shirtless back. Slowly, almost torturously, she rocked up against him, right on top of his burgeoning hard on.

He groaned, gripping tight to her waist. Then his hands traveled downward, over her legs down to her knees and back up her thighs. He stopped at the hem of her tight skirt and gently eased it up, higher and higher until it revealed the straps of her panties riding low on her hips. His callused thumbs traced her jutting hipbones and he felt her body shiver against his.

Without a word, she reached around to her side and slid the zipper down. Then she shrugged out of the dress, pulling it up over her stomach. The kiss broke just for a second as Oliver helped her get it over her head, but his lips were on hers immediately after.

Once she was free from her dress, his arms wrapped around her back so he could unsnap her bra, and it fell away. He paused to stare at the glorious beauty of her mostly unclothed body. Sure, Oliver Queen had his fair share of women in his day, but none like Felicity.

Few could even hold a candle to Felicity Smoak.

This was so much different than the last time they had sex. Two days ago he was trying to bury his grief into being with her. Now, he was finally getting the chance to explore her, the way he always wanted.

He made a trail of kisses along her jaw and down her neck. He gently bit on the skin between her collarbones and she hissed in pleasure, her hands going up to card through his short cropped hair.

Soon enough, he came face to face with her chest. With one hand, he gently squeezed and pinched the nipple of her left breast while his mouth covered the other, his tongue flicking the nib back and forth. It made Felicity arch her back, pushing her chest closer to him.

"Oliver," she sighed again. She gripped tight to his head as she continued to rock back and forth over his erection. "God, how I've wanted this."

Her words jolted in his brain. She wanted this? Did that mean she _didn't_ regret having sex with him before?

Then why the hell had she been avoiding him?

Oliver was about to pursue that line of questioning, but then Felicity reached behind her to gently grasp at his bulge through his pajama pants and all rational thought fled his brain. Slowly, so slowly, she gently pushed him down until his back was on the bed and she was hovering over him, her thighs still straddling his hips. She brought her mouth to his chest, her tongue trailing over every plane, every line of muscle and he gave himself over fully to her slow torture. She spent an especially long time tracing the lines of the Bratva tattoo emblazoned over his heart until he felt like his entire body was on fire.

Her mouth continued traveling down his body until she got to the waistband of his pajama pants. With sure hands, she reached up and pulled them down to release his rock hard erection. In an instant, she took him in her mouth and his head fell back into the pillows.

Oliver Queen had slept with many women in his day, but none of them as expert as Felicity Smoak. Here, in the dark silence of his bedroom, she treated his body like a finely tuned instrument, plucking each string, placing each finger just right to make him sing.

He watched in a lustful daze as her lips wrapped around him, sucking her cheeks in, intensifying the wonderful, weightless sensation. He sighed when her tongue swirled around his tip, groaned as her mouth descended all the way down his length and back up again. He cried out as her hand stroked him over and over. He buried his hands into the tangles of her golden hair, silently begging her for everything she had.

Soon enough, he found himself on the cusp of his orgasm, but he had to clench his jaw tightly to stop himself. He didn't want to come. Not yet.

With strong hands, he pulled away from her and sat up in the bed. Felicity came up with him, up onto her knees as he dragged her closer to him. His mouth found hers again, his heart pounding a jagged beat through every muscle in his body.

"You're incredible," he whispered against her lips. "Felicity, you're absolutely incredible.

Oliver repositioned her until she was straddling him again, her center hovering just inches from his cock. He pulled away from her mouth just slightly so he could look into her eyes as he pushed aside the lace of her panties and dipped a calloused finger inside of her.

Felicity's eyes fell closed and he watched in heated satisfaction as she brought herself down harder onto his hand. He added another finger and her back bowed slightly, pressing her body closer to him.

"Oliver," she moaned.

"Yes, Felicity?" he breathed.

"I want you," she sighed. "Please...please, I want you inside of me. I want to feel you. I just want to feel you."

It was like her words had unlocked something inside of him. This was something he'd forbade himself from feeling for so long, but here it was, confronting him head on.

Without another word, he pulled her out of her panties entirely. Once they were discarded on the floor with the rest of her clothes, he gently guided her hips until she was hovering right over him, his tip pressing just at her entrance. Then, very slowly, she lowered herself onto him.

Suddenly, every muscle in his body had turned into molten lava; slow moving, but burning. It lit his insides on fire as she started to move her hips against his. It turned his body to lead, but he never wanted it to end.

"Felicity," he sighed, burying his head into her chest.

Now that Oliver wasn't preoccupied with his grief, he could let himself feel everything about her. How she felt, wrapped around him, how she whimpered each time she came down on him. He watched in fascination as her eyes fell closed and her back arched, pressing closer to him, like she was trying to burrow her way inside of him.

And damn if he wasn't trying to do the same thing.

He could feel her release coming in the increasingly erratic way her hips moved. His hands trailed up her back until he gripped her shoulders and drove himself into her, harder and faster to meet her need.

"Oh God! Oh God, Oliver!" she shouted.

He felt it. He felt her. She clinged to him as her orgasm crashed through her body, her back arching, her eyes closed but her mouth open in a wordless, soundless cry.

Seconds later, he felt himself get swept up with her. In that moment, all that mattered was her.

As he came back down from his high, Felicity pushed him backward until his back was on the bed, her mouth on his once more. But this kiss, this kiss was so much different than the ones they just shared. It was all sweet sighs and soothing touches.

He clinged to her kisses, just like he clinged to her.

When they came apart, Oliver got up from the bed and ducked into his bathroom to grab a damp washcloth and clean up.

But when he went back into his room, the bed was empty.


	19. Chapter 19

"Prochnost."

"Prochnost," everyone answered as they lifted their tumblers in unison.

Oliver knocked back his vodka, relishing the burn in his throat. He could feel rather than see Felicity's presence behind him in the corner of his office, but he was very pointedly ignoring her tonight.

Tonight was a big night. Tonight was about to bring him one step closer to everything he'd worked toward for five long years.

Once the vodka had disappeared, Digg began the meeting. "Gentlemen. Now that we have finally gotten rid of the Triad lieutenants, it's time to set our sights on the big guns."

"Chien Na Wei," Gold muttered under his breath with a menacing grin.

"Once we get rid of her, we will finally have sole control of the Pacific Northwest," Digg nodded.

"The easiest way would be to bomb her," Fyers said. "Plant one on her car or something."

Roy shook his head. "An explosion like that is far too likely to take out innocent civilians."

"What do we care?" Fyers scoffed.

As one, Roy and Digg leveled matching glares at the boevik, but Fyers simply rolled his eyes in return.

"Fine, we won't bomb her. Jesus."

"Hire a hitman to take her out," Roy suggested, but Digg shook his head.

"No good hitman will want to touch that contract with a ten-foot pole," he said.

"Poison," Gold called out. "We can do her like we did Lao Fei."

"That requires intelligence on her eating patterns that we do not have, and would take forever to procure," Digg said. "By the time we'd finally come up with a plan to poison her food, she could have rallied her troops."

Oliver huffed impatiently as he watched his men argue back and forth. This could go on for ages, spitballing one hopeless idea after another when there really was only one outcome he was interested in.

"No," he announced. "I want her brought in. I want her brought in alive."

Everyone in the room suddenly went completely still as they turned to stare at their captain in disbelief.

"You want us to physically capture the head of the West Coast Triad," Fyers said flatly, "and you want us to bring her in _alive_?"

"Yes," Oliver answered, his arms crossed over his chest and his expression firm. "I want her brought here, and I want all of you to come up with a plan to do that."

"You've got to be fucking kidding!" Gold shouted.

"I assure you, I am not."

Fyers threw his hands up in frustration. "Oh, sure. Yeah, let's just go walk up to the most dangerous woman in Starling City and force her to come with us to a Bratva stronghold. That sounds like a _fantastic_ plan."

"Oliver, he's right," Digg said. "There's no way she's coming in alive. You know that right?"

"I don't care what it takes," he said stubbornly. "You're bringing her in, and you're bringing her in alive."

"Why?" Gold demanded. "Why can't we just kill the bitch and get it over with?"

The man finally snapped. "Because she's going to answer for the death of my father, and she's going to pay for it with her own blood before I relieve her of the burden of breathing," Oliver snarled.

The rest of the room went deathly quiet.

"Oliver," Digg said quietly. "We understand that you want to avenge your father. But are you _sure_ you want to do _this_?"

"Do you realize how many people are going to be injured bringing her in?" Roy demanded. "Hell, not just injured — do you know how many people are going to _die_ trying to bring her in? She's not going to go quietly! She's going to take down as many of us as she can!"

Oliver's rage boiled over inside of him. He picked up the paperweight off his desk and threw it hard against his office door. It exploded, like a gunshot.

"I DON'T CARE!" he screamed. "You will bring her in no matter what it takes, and if any of you have a problem with it, then there's the door!"

He stood from his seat and walked around the desk to glare at Roy. But the defiant boevik glared right back at him, refusing to back down.

"But I promise you," Oliver whispered dangerously, "you won't like what's waiting for you on the other end of it."

Roy's nostrils flared and his fists clenched. Without another word, he got up from his seat and stomped toward the door, kicking the pieces of the broken paperweight out of his way before flinging it open and slamming it shut behind him.

With a clenched jaw, Oliver turned to Gold and Fyers sitting deathly still with shrewd and calculating looks on their faces. "The two of you," he snapped. "You will come up with a plan to bring her in. I want her captured, do you understand?"

They nodded.

"Fine. Now get out of my house."

Without another word, the two men stood from their seats and followed Roy out of the office, kicking aside more glass pieces as they went.

Once they were gone, Digg frowned at Oliver. "So that's how it's going to be now?" he demanded. "You're going to kill Roy because he had the stones to stand up to you and tell you that your plan is a shitty one?"

"You can go too, Digg," Oliver shot back through clenched teeth.

The two men glared at one another, as if daring the other to back down. Finally, Digg let out a huff of breath through his nostrils, then marched out of his office.

It was just Oliver and Felicity. It was also the first time in three days that Oliver had been alone with her in a room outside of Queen Consolidated.

The first time in three days that he could get her to look at him, and all he could read in her eyes was disappointment. It made him wish he had another paper weight throw.

With quick, jerky movements, he grabbed his tumbler and stalked toward the drink cart to pour himself more vodka.

"So?" he barked, still refusing to look at her. "Are you going to tell me this is a bad idea as well? Are you going to tell me I'm making a mistake, or that I'm overreacting?"

She didn't say anything while he sucked down another mouthful. It set his mouth and throat on fire, not dissimilar to the sensation he felt whenever he kissed her.

"I don't think you're overreacting," she said quietly.

That made his hand still. Very slowly he turned stared at her with wary and distrustful eyes.

He knew her far too well. She was about to say something else that would throw him off.

"But?" he prompted her.

Her expression was guarded, and he hated it. He hated seeing the walls she built between them, blocking what she was really thinking, what she was really feeling.

For god's sake, he'd seen her completely naked. How was it that there were so many goddamn walls between them?

She bit down on a corner of her lip and for some reason that made him all the angrier. It made him want to grab her by the wrists and drag her toward him while he crushed her lips underneath his.

"What?" he demanded. "What are you thinking? Tell me!"

Her body froze and her gaze abruptly cooled. "I don't think you're overreacting, but this _is_ a bad idea, and you _are_ making a mistake."

Oliver rolled his eyes. "You're wrong. You don't know anything about this."

"I know a thing or two about wanting revenge," she answered dryly.

His fists clenched and he wanted to throw his tumbler at the door, just like he did his paperweight.

"It's not the same!" he shouted. "Cooper didn't kill your father!"

But Felicity had had enough. "Oliver, we buried Sin last week!" she shouted. "We watched her get killed in real time, and now you're proposing we kill more of our _own men_ to bring Chien Na Wei in!"

His jaw clenched as she stood from her chair and stalked toward him. "Who's it going to be next?" she demanded. "Is it going to be Fyers? I know you don't give a shit about him or Gold. But what about their associates? What about _Roy_? Are you going to bury him too?"

She was so close. He could see the fury blazing in her blue eyes, the flush of anger in her cheeks. He could smell her perfume, soft but not too cloying. But most of all, he could remember what it felt like when her hands ran all over his bare chest as she rubbed herself against him, whispering his name over and over again as she arched her body into his.

It happened in an instant. One moment they were standing inches apart, glaring at each other and the next minute she was was perched on the edge of his desk, her knees spread apart and her skirt hitched up almost around her hips while he stood between them, his mouth slanting over hers.

This kiss was so much different than all the others they shared. This kiss was a battle of wills, a contest with no real winner, and certainly no real prize.

They kept pushing and pulling at one another, Oliver's hands pushing Felicity's dress further up her thighs until it was hitched around her waist. But just as he was about to pull her panties off, her hands hardened over his chest and she pushed him away.

"No," she gasped. "We can't do this. _I_ can't do this."

Oliver's lungs were still heaving, like he'd just sprinted the Starling City marathon. "What?" he asked in confusion. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Felicity slid off the desk and straightened her dress, not looking at him. Her cheeks were still flushed and her hair was in a complete disarray, and Oliver felt no small amount of pride that he had been the reason for all of it.

When she didn't answer him, he grabbed her wrist and turned her to face him. "Felicity, stop!" he shouted. "Would you stop running for once this week and talk to me?"

"We are talking," she said, her eyes trained away from him. "This, right here, this is us talking."

"No, it's not! You won't even look at me!"

She finally wrenched her gaze from the floor to his eyes. There was a fire in them, but there was also...intense sadness? Regret? Sorrow?

He couldn't tell.

"What do you want me to say?" she demanded. "What is it exactly you want to hear? That I can't do this here, that I can't let you feel me up in the same place you had sex with Isabel? That every time I'm in this stupid office, all I can think of is that bitch with her tongue down your throat? That this, just now, that it made me feel like just another woman in a long line of Oliver Queen's conquests? Is that what you want to hear, Oliver? Is that what you want me to say?"

His throat went abruptly dry. It was an accusation that made him freeze in his tracks, but he wasn't going to run away from it. It had been far too long since she had even looked at him, and even when she was glaring at him, it was the most alive he'd felt in ages.

"That's not what this is," he said quietly.

Felicity let out a mirthless laugh. "It's not? I'm sorry, but isn't this your M.O.? You find the nearest available woman to help scratch your itch, then you walk away and pretend it never happened!"

"That's not what this is!" he repeated. "And besides, the second time, that was all _you_. _You_ were the one who came into my room, and you were also the one to walk away. Hell, you were the one to walk away both times! After Sin's funeral, I woke up and you were just gone!"

"Well I wasn't going to wait around for you to be the one to walk away from me," she said, her arms coming to cross defensively over her chest.

"And what makes you think that I would have?"

"Because that's what you do, Oliver! You run away when things get too hard or when they get complicated or when you start to have even an inkling of an emotion you can't identify!"

His fists clenched at his sides. "Well I'm not running away now! I'm standing here. I'm standing _here_ in front of you, and I'm not going anywhere!"

"I don't believe you!"

Oliver wanted to tear his hair out. He knew where this was coming from, and not for the first time did he regret sleeping with Isabel.

He didn't say anything for the longest time as she stood there, her eyes slowly welling up. Finally she turned on her heel and walked toward the door, and it forced him to say the words he'd kept locked behind his lips.

"She wasn't you."

Felicity paused in her exit, her hand hovering right over the doorknob.

"That's why I slept with her," he said softly. "She wasn't you."

She whipped her head around, her teary eyes full of fury. "If that's supposed to make me feel better — "

"No, I'm trying to explain!" he shouted. "It was right after the benefit, when Sebastian Blood had taken you hostage, and you...you can't _imagine_ what was going through my head when it happened. I'm still haunted by nightmares with you and a gun pressed against your head."

Her hand dropped from the doorknob and she stepped a little bit closer, her arms coming up once again to wrap defensively around herself.

"You were...you were understandably shaken," he continued. "God, anyone in your position would have been. And I expected you to run as far as you could in the other direction, and I wouldn't have stopped you. I _wanted_ you to run. I wanted you to leave this and never come back. But you didn't. And that scared the shit out of me."

He reached up and rubbed his hands over his tired eyes.

"That was part of the reason I became distant and pulled away, and pushed you out of boevik meetings. I wanted to _make_ you leave. I thought that if you didn't have any reason to stay, then you wouldn't. You'd finally walk away, and you'd be safe."

There was a long pause.

"What was the other part?" she finally asked.

He took in a deep breath. "The other part was just like you said." He smiled wryly. "How did you put it? I walk away whenever I start to feel an emotion I don't recognize. And this — _you_ — you inspired emotions in me that I'd never experienced before, and it was terrifying. As much as I wanted you to leave, I was terrified that you would. So I ran before you did."

Oliver closed his eyes. "I was in denial. I was in denial about my feelings for you. So when Isabel showed up and sat in my lap and kissed me, I let her. Because she wasn't you."

He shook his head again, his eyes still closed. "But the worst part is...the entire time it was happening, I kept wishing she was."

When he opened his eyes again, Felicity was suddenly standing right in front of him. Her eyes were filled with tears and it felt like a knife in the gut to know that he was the cause for them.

Without thinking about it, he reached for her waist and pulled her in closer. "Felicity, you're not another conquest, or whatever it was that you said. You've never been just some means to scratch an itch. You're…" He struggled to find the words. "You're the light. You've been the one that shined a light in all the dark corners of my life. You brought the sun back, when I thought I'd never see it again."

He tilted her chin up so he could look her in the eyes. Two tears leaked from the corners and he reached up to swipe them away. "I'm so sorry I pushed you away. I regret sleeping with Isabel. But I _swear_ that you mean more to me than anyone ever has."

She closed her eyes and more tears escaped. Her eyebrows furrowed into a point over her nose and even though he couldn't see into her lovely blue irises, he could still tell she was in pain.

"Felicity, please," he whispered. "Talk to me. What are you thinking? Please, tell me."

She pulled away from him, shaking her head. "I...I can't, Oliver. I can't."

And before he could say anything, she turned around and fled his office.

* * *

With all three Triad lieutenants successfully dead, the word on the street had been buzzing that Chien Na Wei had gone underground. She knew that it was only a matter of time before the Bratva went after her, so she was taking even more precautions than ever.

Which made the whole plan of bringing her in all the more difficult.

But Oliver was undeterred. He started redirecting every non-committed resource to infiltrating the Triad's considerably weakened defenses to help formulate a plan.

A week after he issued his directive, Fyers and Gold came back to Oliver with a plan. Their associates had been staking out all of the Triad's opium shipments and deduced that a new one was coming in on Friday. The Triad's resources had been greatly diminished since the start of the war, meaning Chien Na Wei had no choice but to emerge from her bunker to ensure the safety of her drugs herself.

That was when they would zero in.

The night of the operation, Oliver sat at his desk in his study, waiting. Digg stood beside him, his huge arms crossed over his chest. Digg's face had been impressively impassive for the majority of the night, even though Oliver knew his adviser didn't approve of this plan even a little bit.

"Where's Felicity?" Oliver asked, his eyes not looking away from the monitor in front of him.

"She's on her way," Digg answered.

Since the last boevik meeting, Felicity and Oliver had come to an unspoken agreement not to talk about what happened between them. All their conversations consisted of business, whether it was QC or Bratva. They broached on nothing personal, and they kept their contact as light as possible.

But even so, none of it could stop Oliver from watching her out of the corner of his eyes or letting them roam over her lovely figure. And it _certainly_ didn't stop him from dreaming and fantasizing about all the different ways he had yet to touch her.

A few minutes later, the door opened and Felicity stepped through. Of course Oliver's heart had to start pounding the moment he saw her.

"Sorry for being late," she said sheepishly.

"No worries," Digg reassured her. "The drugs haven't arrived yet, and neither has Chien Na Wei."

She nodded and Oliver immediately stood from his chair. Without meeting his eyes, she settled into his abandoned seat and pulled her laptop out.

"OK," she said, her tongue tucked in between her teeth and it was all Oliver could do not to kick Digg out of the room and take that tongue with his. "We should be up and running in just a few seconds."

Focus, he told himself sternly. To distract himself from the thoroughly distracting blonde sitting in his chair, he turned toward his drink cart to pour himself some vodka.

A few moments later, the comm lines crackled to life.

"We're in place, captain," Gold's rough voice intoned.

Oliver took in a deep breath as he took a sip of his drink. "Good," he called back. "Any sight of her yet?"

"No, not yet," Fyers replied. "But my men are ready."

"As are mine," Gold added.

Fifteen minutes later, a black, unmarked, armored truck came rumbling up in sight of the security cameras Felicity had hacked into.

"We've got a twenty on the shipment," Fyers muttered.

Oliver and Digg stood behind Felicity as she worked, watching the scene unfold before them. All thoughts of Felicity were shoved to the very furthest reaches of his brain, his body tensing instead as they saw the masked Triad members climb out of the truck.

"Does anyone have a twenty on Chien Na Wei?" Digg asked.

"Not yet," Gold answered.

Oliver's fists clenched at his sides. The knot of uneasiness tightened in his stomach.

As if she were reading his mind, Felicity whispered, "Does anyone else have a bad feeling about this?"

They watched in silence for several minutes as the Triad members started slowly unloading the shipment. Then, suddenly, the comm link crackled to life.

"I've got a twenty on China White," Fyers growled.

Sure enough, from the corner of the screen, there was a flash of white. Felicity's fingers immediately started flying over the keyboard as she tasked the satellite she'd hacked into to zoom in on the woman.

"Yes, we see her," Oliver said. "Move in."

Fyers gave the signal and his associates, along with Gold's, emerged from the shadows. They took the Triad members by surprise, but not for long — everyone on Felicity's computer screen was soon locked in deadly battle, while Fyers and Gold both emerged to fight Chien Na Wei herself.

The battle raged on for long minutes, but Oliver kept his eyes on Chien Na Wei facing off against his two most lethal boevik. It was obvious how she had become the leader of the Triad's influence in Starling City — even when facing off against two men, she was very easily besting both of them without so much as blinking.

After what felt like an eternity, the skilled Triad leader gave one final kick and knocked Fyers into a wall. Then she whipped a knife out of some invisible holster on her body and flung it at Gold, his screams echoing through the comms.

Once her assailants were down, she gave some sort of signal, and all the other Triad members still fighting with Bratva associates immediately retreated, hopping into the armed van and running away as fast as possible. Chien Na Wei, however, didn't. Instead, she disappeared almost as mysteriously as she had come.

"Where is she?" Oliver demanded, leaning in closer to the screen.

"I don't know," Felicity muttered. She was typing away, trying to retask all the security and traffic cameras in the area to try and get a glimpse of where the Triad leader had gone.

"Oliver," Fyers rasped into the comms. "She's gone. We've lost her. And Gold's in a bad way."

The Bratva captain scrubbed his hands angrily over his face. He was suddenly overtaken with a deep need to knock everything off his desk in complete frustration.

They'd lost her. She was gone.

"Get home," Digg told Fyers over the comm link. "We'll call in Dr. Snow immediately."

"Roger that. We're on our way."

The link closed, and a heavy tension hung in Oliver's office as Digg and Felicity both turned warily to watch him, waiting for his reaction.

They didn't have to wait long.

"GODDAMN IT!" Oliver roared as he swept a stack of papers off his desk.

"Oliver, we always knew that it was going to be a longshot that this would work," Digg said quietly, calmly. "A woman like Chien Na Wei hasn't survived on the streets this long without acquiring the skills to slip away easily."

That did nothing to soothe him. He kicked hard at the base of his desk , then threw himself onto his couch, his face buried in his hands.

He felt helpless. Losing Sin, letting Chien Na Wei slip through his fingers, and of course, the whole thing with Felicity...he was losing control, and it made him feel like a caged animal without any release for his pent up anger and aggression.

And he felt like a failure. Every single step he had taken since his father died was to bring him to this moment. To bring him to the cusp of getting revenge on his killers. He failed. He not only failed the organization and his father, but he had failed himself.

He was drowning.

Instinctually, he took in several deep breaths, as if his body was trying to remind him that he was not, in fact drowning. The breaths calmed him, but by a very small measure. Enough, anyway, to help him start to think of the next steps forward.

"Digg, call Dr. Snow and have her come in. Then go meet Fyers and Gold when they come back in," he said in as even a voice as he could, his head still buried and his eyes still closed.

"Yes, sir," the older man said quietly. Oliver listened as his footsteps, muffled by the thick carpeting, got fainter and fainter. When he heard the door open and close again, he knew Digg was gone.

There was a long beat of silence. He knew Felicity was still there. He could feel her presence, feel the electricity in the air between them.

"Is there anything I can do?" she finally asked.

There was a lot she could do. There was so much he wanted to do with her. He wanted to push her up against his desk and pick up where they had left off the other day. He wanted to exorcise all his demons with her. He wanted to burrow his way inside of her and never emerge.

He wanted to bathe himself in her light. He wanted her to wash away all the shadows of his life and stand in the sun with her.

But he couldn't ask her any of that.

When he didn't answer, he heard her stand and start walking. He fully expected her to walk away, but instead he felt the couch cushion shift. His head whipped up and he opened his eyes only to see her sitting next to him, her blue eyes boring into him behind her glasses.

Her hands reached for his face, and his eyes fell closed again as her thumbs traced over her eyebrows. Then, ever so softly, she leaned in and pressed her lips against his.

Just like all the other times they had kissed, it was like she was breathing life into him. Her soft touches, her clean scent all washed over him like a blissful, cool balm, healing him from the inside.

When she pulled away, his eyes came open slowly so he could stare into her eyes.

"Felicity," he whispered. Her name came out like a plea on his lips. "Felicity, please. Please don't leave me. I can't handle anymore loss tonight."

Oliver watched as a war flickered in her eyes. He saw the uncertainty, the conflict, the fear and the desire. He saw it all.

But then she took in a deep breath, and all the conflict drained away.

"OK," she whispered. "I promise, I'm not leaving you, Oliver. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."


	20. Chapter 20

Oliver woke up the next morning feeling much warmer and far better rested than he'd ever been before. Blinking away the sunlight filtering through his bedroom window he rolled onto his side and paused when he realized just why.

His heart swelled at the sight of Felicity lying in the bed next to him, her golden hair fanned out on the pillow, her hand tucked underneath her cheek. Her eyes were still closed and her breathing was steady.

She stayed the night, and it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his life.

He settled in close to her to watch in fascination as she slept. Their faces were just inches apart, close enough for him to count every single one of her eyelashes.

His nearness must have nudged her out of her sleep because soon enough, those same eyelashes he was counting started to flutter to reveal the beautiful blue eyes that he never got tired of staring into. She blinked a couple of times as everything slid into focus for her and when she saw him, her face slowly melted into a smile.

"Hey," she said in a raspy voice.

"Hi," he murmured back, his hand coming up to stroke the bare skin of her arm.

"You were watching me sleep," she said in a mock accusing tone.

He shrugged, refusing to feel ashamed. "Because you stayed."

"I told you I would."

"I know. But I just wanted to make sure."

His hand continued to trace the path from her shoulder, down to her elbow over and over again as he gazed into her eyes. He could sense there were deep, conflicted emotions in their depths, and he wanted so much to know what they were.

"What are you thinking?" he whispered.

She looked down and bit on her lip. The action distracted him for a brief second, but then she looked back at him and his eyes were glued on hers once more.

"I keep thinking how we can't do this," she murmured. "But every time I think about getting out of this bed and walking away, I can't bring myself to do it."

Oliver struggled to tamp down his panic. Instead his arm moved down to wrap around her waist, hoping that it was enough to hold her in place. "Then don't. Stay. Stay here, with me."

Felicity sighed and closed her eyes. "Oliver…"

"No, please," he begged. "Please, let me say something."

Her eyes opened again and she waited warily for his next words.

"Felicity, I...I know that you've been through a lot and that you have difficulty putting your trust in people, especially men. First your dad and then Cooper. I know you're waiting for the next man that you care about to leave you. I can see it in your eyes every time I touch you. You want to let yourself enjoy it, but part of you keeps holding back."

Tears started pooling, and they fell as her eyes fluttered closed. He reached up automatically to wipe them away.

"But I _promise_ you, Felicity, that I'm not going anywhere," he murmured. "I'm not going to leave you. I can't leave you. I love you too much."

She sucked in a breath, but he continued.

"I love you, Felicity. I don't know when it happened. I don't know when I woke up and realized that I can't live without you. But it happened and now, all I can think about is you — all I can think about is being with you, about having you by my side forever."

"Oliver," she said in a broken whisper. "You can't say that. Please, don't — don't say that, please."

"Why?" he asked. "Why can't I tell you the truth?"

More tears fell down her cheeks. "You just...I just...this is wrong, Oliver. This is wrong. We can't do this. You can't love me."

"But I do," he insisted. "I know it's hard for you to trust me. I know that I'm not good for you, but I want — I _need_ — the chance to become good for you. To earn your trust."

Her eyes slowly opened. They were still swimming in tears, and Oliver felt the need to kiss all of them away.

"Oliver…"

His thumb pushed away an errant tear. "What?" he murmured. "Come on, Felicity. Tell me what you're thinking, please."

"Oliver, what if…" she whispered, "...what if it's not what you think? What if it's not _you_ who's not good for me? What if it's the other way around?"

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"What if I'm the one who's bad for you?" she asked in a broken voice.

His heart thudded in his chest and without thinking, he reached for her waist and pulled her flush against him.

"That's insane," he said fervently, pressing his lips to the hair on the crown of her head. "You? Bad for me? Felicity, you are the very best part of my life."

He felt instead of saw the fresh wave of tears that took over her body.

But at the same time, her arms came up to reach around his chest and she clinged to him, like she was afraid that he would disappear.

And that, Oliver thought, was enough for the moment.

* * *

Oliver spent the rest of the weekend with Felicity in his bed, and every time he opened his eyes and realize she hadn't left, he couldn't help the swelling in his chest. In fact, the only time they got up was to go to the bathroom or to pick up the tray of food Raisa laid outside Oliver's door three times a day.

They spent the whole time talking about everything under the sun. Felicity revealed more details about her mysterious childhood. She related tales of growing up in Las Vegas, her mother waiting tables as she did her homework at the bar. She told him how she taught herself to count cards and how she'd gotten banned from nearly every casino on the Strip because of it.

In turn, Oliver told her about fishing trips with his father and beach vacations with his whole family, when they were still whole. He told her about the more reckless escapades of Ollie Queen, a careless playboy who spent the better part of his teens and early twenties hopping from bed to bed. He told her how he'd gotten kicked out of four colleges, and he felt warm all over whenever one of his anecdotes made Felicity laugh.

He also told her he loved her. He whispered it when they woke up, he growled it in her ear as he buried himself inside of her, he declared it boldly every time she said something that reminded him of the depth of his feelings.

Each time he said it, she flinched. But still she stayed. He vowed he would say it enough that it would no longer sound like a curse in her ears, and she would learn to accept that he wasn't going anywhere.

Underneath all of the happiness and bliss that came with spending an entire weekend naked in bed with Felicity, though, lurked the ever-present danger that Chien Na Wei presented. He hadn't forgotten about the failed mission to bring her in, and his desire for revenge hadn't lessened at all. But her touch made him feel like less of a failure, and her eyes made him believe that when it was finally finished, he could be whole again.

Unfortunately, their weekend had to come to an end. Monday rolled around with its usual vengeance, forcing Felicity to finally leave Oliver's bed. But when they got onto the elevator at QC away from prying eyes, his hand still found hers and he didn't release it until the doors opened again.

He went about his normal business work day, but every time Felicity walked into his office in her bright blue dress, he had an extra smile for her. And if his hand just happened to linger on her bare shoulder when he thanked her for bringing by the quarterly reports, well no one else was the wiser.

Later that afternoon, Felicity strode into his office with his customary afternoon cup of coffee and a small grin on her face. "Good afternoon, Oliver," she said before setting it down on his desk and flipping open her folio. "We should go over your schedule and some of your appointments for tomorrow."

Oliver stood and walked around his desk until he was standing right in front of her. "We should," he murmured with a smile, his hands traveling up to her waist.

She raised her eyebrows at him. "Mr. Queen, what are you doing?" she asked archly, though there was a mischievous glint in her eyes.

"Going over my schedule," he said before leaning down to press a kiss against her jaw.

"I don't think this is the best time — "

"No one is here. No one can see us. We're on the top floor of the QC building, so no one can look into the windows. We're practically alone."

He could feel the hesitancy in Felicity's muscles and he was just about to dip his mouth lower to her collarbone while his hands traveled to grip her ample ass, but a shrill ringing from his cell phone interrupted them.

With an irritated sigh, he pulled away and dug his phone out of his pocket. "What?" he snapped as he answered, not bothering to even check the caller ID.

"Oliver, we've got a situation," Digg's grave voice announced.

That immediately had his attention. "What's going on?"

The minute he asked that, though, the alarms started going off throughout the whole building. Oliver looked up and saw Felicity's eyes widening before walking around his desk to sit down at his computer.

After a few seconds of rushed typing, she said, "Security initiated a lockdown protocol. No one is allowed in or out of the building."

Oliver put his phone on speaker and set it between him and Felicity. "Digg, what the hell is going on?"

"Chien Na Wei is here."

And just like that, all the air left his lungs.

Felicity head shot up and their eyes met in a single, panicked moment.

"She brought two of her goons," Digg continued. "They killed the security guards in the lobby before we could take them out. And while they were causing that diversion, she disappeared. We're looking for her now, I'll call back with an update."

His adviser hung up.

Turning a frustrated glare to Felicity, he asked, "Can _you_ find out where she went?"

She was already in QC's security network, pulling up the footage from security cameras placed all over the building. She flipped through the images at lightning speed until a flash of white hair caught their attention. She paused and zoomed into the image.

"It looks like she went for the elevator," Felicity said.

Oliver frowned and leaned closer to the monitor. "But that's pointless. The elevators automatically stop in the middle of a lockdown on the building."

"Except for the executive elevator," a cold voice said.

Oliver's head whipped up and he felt his stomach clench in cold fury as he stared at the woman herself standing in the doorway of his office, her arm around the neck of a terrified young woman he'd seen around the building from time to time.

And pressed against the woman's temple was the barrel of Chien Na Wei's gun.

"Hello, Oliver," she smirked. "Good to see you."

"Chien Na Wei," he growled, instinctively moving around to hide Felicity from the woman's glare.

"How have you been?" she drawled. "I assume well. You look well. You're still alive, and your organization is still intact. Or should I say, _both_ of your organizations."

His glance down at the woman, whose terrified eyes kept darting back and forth between the two of them.

"I, on the other hand…" she sighed. "I haven't been doing so well. You see, the Bratva's been trying to take down _my_ organization for several weeks now. They cut off all my opium suppliers, took over my lines of distribution and killed all my lieutenants." The arm choking the woman tightened and the woman whimpered. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

"Let her go," he shouted.

She chuckled. "Patience, Oliver. I'm getting to that part."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he demanded.

"Colleen," Chien Na Wei addressed the woman, who flinched. "Do you know who this man is?"

She nodded, too terrified to speak.

"Who is he?"

"O-Oliver Q-Queen," she gasped.

"And what does he do?"

She swallowed, apparently too overcome with fear to continue speaking. Unfortunately, that didn't sit well with Chien Na Wei, who pressed the barrel of her gun harder against the woman's temple.

"Answer me, Colleen," she commanded. "What does Mr. Queen do?"

"H-He's the CEO of Queen Consolidated!" Colleen stuttered.

Chien Na Wei smirked. "He is indeed. But did you know that the esteemed Mr. Queen, CEO to Queen Consolidated and generally upstanding member of Starling City society, is also the head of the Russian mob here in this very same city?"

Ice dropped into Oliver's stomach, and he suddenly realized what she was doing.

"Aren't you, Oliver?" she demanded, her finger tightening over the trigger. Colleen flinched as the gun metal bit into her skin. "Say it, or your office decor will include a little bit more brain matter than usual."

The flames of fury ignited anew in his chest. All he wanted to do was lunge at the woman and turn that same gun on her.

But that horrified look on the young woman's face stopped him dead in his tracks.

"Yes," he bit out. "I am a captain of the Bratva."

Chien Na Wei's face lit up in triumph. "You heard that, Colleen? This very same man you work for in this beautiful building is head of the Pacific Northwest Bratva. The very _same_ organization that has been flooding the streets with a drug called Vertigo," she continued conversationally.

The young woman's eyes widened at the mention of the drug.

"You've heard of Vertigo, haven't you? It comes in green and purple pills. People have been dropping left and right because of it, but the police can't seem to get a handle of the problem. Well, can't or won't...that's really a matter of opinion, don't you think?"

Tears started streaming down Colleen's cheeks as she stared at Oliver with a terrified look. He knew then and there that the expression on the face of this relative stranger would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.

"Tell her, Oliver," she smirked. "Tell Colleen how her brother's dead because he overdosed on the drugs _your_ men sold him."

His fists clenched painfully at his sides.

"You want to talk about death tolls?" he bit out. "You want to talk about how many people your opium has killed? Vertigo hasn't been on the streets nearly as long as you have!"

"But this isn't about me, dear boy," she drawled. " _I'm_ not the one who's trying to put on a public face as a billionaire executive and philanthropist. _I'm_ not the one pretending to be a good guy."

"Stop this," he growled. "Let her go!"

"Well, that's up to you," Chien Na Wei continued conversationally. "You have a choice to make now, Oliver. You see this?" She removed the arm she used to hold Colleen by the neck to reach behind her back and grab a digital recorder. Its red light blinkered ominously. "This has been recording our conversation the whole time I've been here."

She tucked it into the pocket of her hostage's pants. "I'm going to give it to my good friend Colleen. Now, these are your options. Option number one: I let her go. I can drop my gun and put my hands behind my head and let your men drag me back to your mansion where inevitably you will question and torture me crimes I did not commit."

Oliver's heart pounded in his chest. Chien Na Wei was willing to turn herself over to him. Willing to face to the charge of killing his father.

It all seemed too good to be true.

"But the minute she walks out of this building, Oliver, sweet Colleen here tells your secret. She gives that recorder to the media and by the five o'clock evening news, your pretty face will be plastered all over town not as the CEO of Queen Consolidated, but as the man who has ruthlessly killed, maimed and murdered innocent people in a territorial power grab for the Bratva."

All the blood in his veins ran suddenly ice cold at the thought.

"Option number two: I kill her. I can put a bullet through her brain and then I walk out of this building and your precious secret will remain just that: a secret."

Colleen let out a sob, and the sound tore through his chest.

"What makes you think I'm going to let you walk out of here at all?" he demanded.

She smirked. "And just how are you going to do that, Oliver? You're unarmed and isolated here on the executive floor. _I'm_ the one holding the gun. In fact, I'm holding quite a bit more than that. You try to even touch me, you and your pretty little assistant will be on the ground faster than you can blink."

The thought of her harming even a hair on Felicity's head had his vision flooding with red.

This was it, he thought to himself. This was how they outed him in the end. Did he give up all his hopes of living a legitimate life outside of the Bratva in exchange for the _one_ thing he'd been working toward for five long years? Or, with revenge finally so close to being his, did he let that slip away in order to maintain his cover, his company, his reputation in the community?

"Why are you doing his?" he demanded, trying to stall from making a decision. "Why would you just come here and _willingly_ allow yourself to be captured by the Bratva?"

For the first time since she strode through the door, Chien Na Wei dropped her gloating smirk and took on a much more hardened expression.

"Because as much as I hate to admit it, you've taken everything, Oliver," she spat. "You've completely destroyed my organization, and I, myself, have only two options left. The first is to wait for the feds to take me in, and I'd rather die first. The second is to wait for _you_ to take me in. Because if I have learned anything about you in these past few years, it is that you are relentless in your pursuit of misguided revenge."

His fists twitched, itching to punch something. _Misguided_ revenge?

"So as I weighed those two choices, I realized that I'd much rather you take me in," she continued. "But if I'm going down, you better believe that I'm taking you and your reputation down with me."

Oliver's jaw clenched. That had been her objective since the beginning of this war. She wanted to out him. She wanted it known publicly that Oliver Queen, the handsome, well-bred son of Starling elite, was the head of the Pacific Northwest Bratva. She wanted his public face left in ruins.

In that moment, he could hear a million voices screaming in his head. He could hear Anatoly shouting in rapid fire Russian, telling him to let the stupid girl go, his reputation be damned. He could hear his mother telling him to let Chien Na Wei kill the girl, that the Queen's public face was more important than her in the long run. He could hear all the voices of his boevik, both alive and dead, screaming at him with their own opinions.

"Oliver," a soft voice whispered behind him.

A warm hand wrapped around his wrist and he whipped around. Felicity was there beside him, her face filled with both fear and determination. In hunger, he searched her face, begging her to tell him what to do.

She squeezed her hand around his and nodded very slowly. It was a soft, silent show of support. There was no judgment in her eyes. Just compassion.

With a deep breath, he turned back around and stepped closer to Chien Na Wei.

"Let her go," he commanded quietly.

The Triad leader smirked. With deliberate slowness, she took the gun away from Colleen's temple and dropped it on the floor. Then she raised both of her hands, releasing her grip around the poor woman's neck.

With a loud, harsh gasp, Colleen fell forward onto her hands and knees. But she was only down for a minute before she scrambled to her feet and bolted out of Oliver's office as fast as she could.

Minutes later, Felicity disabled the lockdown protocol and Digg and a few more Bratva footmen stormed the executive office, their guns trained on Chien Na Wei. They patted her down and removed all other weapons on her person before zip tying her.

The Triad leader sent Oliver one last gloating smirk before the men forced her to her feet and escorted her out of the building.

Once they were all gone, he was left in his office with Felicity once more. But now he was completely drained of all his emotions, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

Without a word, she stepped toward him and pulled his body close to hers, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and carding her fingers through his short hair.

"It's OK, Oliver," she whispered. "It's OK."

They were the same words she murmured to him the night of Sin's funeral. And just like that, all the tension he had been holding in his body left him as he slumped against her, clinging to her body like she was a life raft in the middle of the ocean.

They stood like that for what felt like hours, just gripping each other and refusing to let go.

* * *

That evening Oliver locked himself in his office immediately after dinner, hoping to spend some time alone with his thoughts and his ever-present bottle of vodka.

He was leaning back in his seat, his feet propped up on his desk and the evening news on the monitor of his computer. The anchors were describing the scene at Queen Consolidated, how the building had gone into lockdown and the lone hostage taken in by known Triad member Chien Na Wei had escaped with a recording of Oliver Queen admitting he was Bratva.

Cue Oliver's mugshot.

He sighed as he poured another finger of booze into his tumbler and knocked it back immediately.

The woman herself was currently chained up in the conversation room beneath his feet. He knew she was waiting for him. But he couldn't bring himself to face her yet.

Oliver was about to pour himself some more vodka when a gentle knock came to the door. He didn't bother answering, knowing that Felicity was on the other side, and sure enough it opened a second later and she walked in with a sad look on her face.

"Have you seen?" he asked quietly, pointing to the news. "I'm famous. Or infamous, really."

"Oliver…"

He shook his head and sucked down some more liquor. She just walked toward him until she was leaning against the edge of the desk, her knee bumping up against his.

They didn't say anything for a long time, content to just be in each other's silent presence. Then, Oliver spoke up.

"My father built that company from the ground up, you know," he told Felicity quietly. "He was the captain of the Bratva, and so was his father and his father's father. But he dreamed of a life outside of it. He dreamed of a life he could lead without being part of the Russian mob. So he started Queen Consolidated and worked hard to make it the biggest and most successful tech company in the state."

He sighed as his hands ran over his tired face. He spent his childhood with his father in his QC office, watching him order around all sorts of important-looking people. He remembered dreaming of the day he could take over Queen Consolidated and make his family proud.

"That was the legacy he wanted to leave for me," Oliver said quietly. "Dad let his Bratva responsibilities fall to the wayside in favor of building the company, but he didn't care. He said he was building something that could outlast him, something that he could pass on to his children. He never wanted Thea or me to be part of this life. He thought that if we ran a legitimate business venture, we'd never have to be part of the Bratva."

He imagined what his father would have said if he'd been in that room with Chien Na Wei pressing a gun to an innocent woman's head, forcing him to choose between his legacy and revenge.

"She's taken everything from me, Felicity," he whispered, and he felt his heart crack inside of his chest as he looked around at the ruins of his life. "She took my father. She took my father's company. She's taken my future. She's taken so much from me."

Suddenly, before he could even realize it, tears were pooling in his eyes. His eyelashes fell closed and the moisture drifted down his cheeks.

"Some days, I feel like she took my humanity, too."

He felt a hand reach up and cup his cheek, swiping gently at the tear tracks. He leaned into her touch and slowly opened his eyes to stare into her beautiful face. Her eyes were bright, and he could feel himself melting into her.

"No, she didn't," she whispered. "You still have your humanity. You're still you. I can see it, in the way you let that girl go to sacrifice your reputation. In the way you're mourning your father's legacy."

Was that the right word for it? Mourning? He supposed it was.

He had dreamed so many times of what it would be like, to get out of the Bratva. To leave the organization and live his entire life above board. He wanted to run Queen Consolidated, possibly with Felicity at his side. They could have lived in the light together. But that dream was gone now.

"What if she tries to take it?" he whispered. "What if she tries to take away the rest of me? Of my humanity?"

She leaned down until she was eye level and framed his face in both her hands. Then she pressed a soft kiss against his lips and he let himself get swept up in her touch.

When she pulled away, she looked deeply into his eyes, like she was trying to impart something very important to him. He couldn't look away even if he wanted to.

"I won't let her," she promised.


	21. Chapter 21

"I have news."

Oliver was immediately wary once Digg walked into his office and made his announcement. The fact that he didn't qualify the _kind_ of news was especially troubling.

Digg took a seat in front the Bratva captain's desk and fixed him with a serious expression. "I got a call from Anatoly this morning. He saw the news and assumed Chien Na Wei was dead. When I told him that she wasn't he demanded to know why and told me he was immediately getting on a plane to come here."

Oliver let out a deep sigh and pressed a hand against his eyes. "So I get to explain to him in person that I want to watch my father's murderer suffer."

"His plane lands this evening," was Digg's only response.

It had been scarcely ten hours since the Triad leader showed up to Queen Consolidated and forced his hand. She'd been locked up in the conversation room an entire morning now, and he had yet to go down there.

Logically, Oliver knew he was the one who wanted her captured. He knew _he_ wanted to extract payment for her crimes by carving each punishment on her skin himself. But now that she was actually there, waiting for him to carry out his revenge, he couldn't bring himself to do it, and he couldn't figure out why.

"Did he mention anything about Queen Consolidated?" Oliver asked.

"No," Digg answered. "But then again, I never got the impression that he cared at all about QC."

Oliver snorted. Wasn't that the truth. Anatoly treated the existence of QC much like a husband would treat an annoying in-law — barely tolerant of its existence. He often called the company an unwelcome distraction in Oliver's life, insisting that the Bratva should be the first priority.

"Fine," he sighed. "Direct Raisa to prepare one of the guest suites for his arrival."

Digg nodded as he stood. "Anything else?"

He paused. Then the memory of Chien Na Wei's triumphant face when he ordered her to let Colleen go crossed his mind's eye, and his fist tightened on his knee.

"Yes. Have the footmen downstairs prepare an instrument tray for the conversation room."

If Digg was surprised, he didn't let on. All he did was nod again as he turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

It was finally time to pay his father's killer a visit.

* * *

"Well if it isn't the great Oliver Queen."

Chien Na Wei greeted him with a rather smug expression, considering she was chained to a steel chair. He felt the rage flare up within him at the look on her face — it was so similar to the one she gave him when he ordered her to release Colleen, knowing that she would out him as Bratva to the world.

It made him wonder if it was the same expression she made when she ordered the hit on his father.

With steeled reserve, he walked toward her and undid the cufflinks of his shirt. He slowly folded them to reveal his forearms.

"How are you, Chien Na Wei?" he asked conversationally. "Enjoying yourself?"

"As much as I can, considering I'm chained to a steel chair," she answered. "Though I have a feeling that I won't be for very long."

He smirked as he stood before, his hands tucked innocuously in his pockets. "Well at least you have a more realistic understanding of what's about to happen."

She quirked a white eyebrow upward. "I also have an incredibly high pain threshold, Oliver," she drawled. "Unlike you, I haven't spent my entire life sitting pretty in a big mansion. Unlike _you_ , I had to earn everything I got."

He nodded agreeably. "You're probably right."

Then he slowly sauntered over to the instrument tray and examined the tools laid out on it. "But I can't help but notice you didn't hold onto it very tightly. Otherwise it wouldn't have been so easy to take from you."

He felt a surge of pleasure as hatred settled into Chien Na Wei's eyes. That was what he'd been waiting for — he wanted to know that he could break her careful mask. He wanted to know that she was capable of suffering.

Because all he wanted to do was make her suffer.

He looked down at the instrument tray that his men had set up for him, and he smiled grimly when he saw the dental tools. His men really had been prepared for every contingency, and he was grateful for that.

"It almost was kind of boring," he continued as he took the graspers and tested them in his hand. "How easy it was, I mean. To take your entire criminal empire away from you."

He turned back around with the graspers and smirked at the scowl on her face.

"You, Oliver Queen, are nothing but an entitled brat," she spat. "You have never had to work for a thing in your spoiled life. You were handed the Bratva captaincy and every time you see something you want, you just _take_ it."

He shrugged. "Perhaps you're right." Then he walked forward and forced her head back and pulled her jaw open, bringing the graspers close to her lips.

"But you know what I want right now? Your teeth. So I think I'll go ahead and take them."

He forced her mouth open even wider and applied the graspers to the very back of her mouth, where her molars were. Then, with a strong grip and a stronger wrench, he clamped down hard on the tooth at the very back of her mouth and ripped it out of her gums.

Chien Na Wei let out a scream that, under normal circumstances, could probably be heard a mile away. Fortunately, the conversation room had been completely soundproofed. No one would be able to hear her cries.

Once he pulled the grasper out, he showed her the bloody, broken tooth. "How much do you think this would fetch for on the Black Market?" he asked her conversationally. "There are so many people out there who hate you. I'm willing to bet they'd pay a pretty penny to put this in their collection."

She had stopped screaming, but her chest was still heaving from her desperate breaths, and her eyes were filled with such loathing. But it didn't bother him for a second. In fact, it fed his need for revenge.

"I bet you wish you were one of your lieutenants instead right about now," he told her as he dropped the tooth onto the instrument tray. "They went out without much of a fuss. A lot less clean up, that's for sure."

He glanced to the side and noticed a brief shot of pain and regret crossing her face. Huh, Oliver thought to himself. So it seemed that the fearsome Triad leader really had a soft spot for her now deceased men.

"Ben Turner died without much of a fight," Oliver told her. "But we disposed of his body pretty easily. I think Fyers kept his blades, though."

"You bastard," Chien Na Wei growled.

"Lao Fei...we had to strategize with him," he continued. "He wasn't as easy to take out. But who would have thought that his love of turtle soup would do him in, in the end? All it took was one dose of venom and he was dead in seconds."

"You BASTARD!" she screamed again, louder this time.

"But the _real_ prize was Shado," Oliver shouted over her. "She was your right hand, wasn't she? She was the one you trained in your image. She was the one who would eventually take over for you. Word on the street was she was almost like a daughter to you. That couldn't have been easy, seeing her bloody body on the street outside that grungy house."

For the first time since Oliver had been there, he watched as Chien Na Wei struggled against her restraints, like she was itching to launch herself at him.

"You're a coward, Oliver Queen," she spat. "Shado may be dead, but you were too chicken shit to do it yourself. You had your lackeys do it for you. You knew you couldn't take her on yourself. One of them even died trying to do it."

A lance of pain went through his heart when he remembered watching Shado plunge a knife through Sin's abdomen on that surveillance footage. He still had nightmares about it.

Tamping furiously down on the memories, he strode forward and landed a hard punch in her gut. The only sound she made was a breathless "oof" as the blow knocked the wind out of her lungs.

He took advantage of her surprise and wrenched her mouth open again to take another tooth, this time from the front. Her scream was louder this time, as he ripped it out as hard and as painfully as he could.

"Sin was twice the person I'll ever be," he growled. "But she died in service to this brotherhood."

Once the tooth was out, he tossed it onto the instrument table and Chien Na Wei spat out a mouthful of blood. "You're blind," she said thickly. "You're so blinded by all the lies that Anatoly keeps feeding you that you can't see the truth."

"Oh yeah?" he sneered. "And what exactly is the truth?"

"That I never killed your father!" she shouted. "I never killed Robert Queen! I had no reason to!"

Oliver's blood suddenly boiled and his rage consumed him. How casually she said his name, how easily she let it fall from her lips. He wanted to take the scalpel off the table and plunge it into her neck right then and there.

"Shut up," he bit out. "I know you're lying."

"No, I'm not," she shot back. "I'm not lying. The Triad didn't kill your father. Robert Queen was hardly a threat to us! He was the worst Bratva leader in your organization's history!"

His hands clenched, and he imagined that they were clenching over her throat.

"SHUT UP!" he screamed. "SHUT UP!"

But she didn't. She kept going.

"He didn't care about the Bratva at all," she continued savagely. "He didn't care about strengthening your influence! He didn't care about the new drugs flooding the market! He let other organizations creep in on Bratva territory because he was too busy building up Queen Consolidated!"

In a blind rage, Oliver reached for the scalpel on the instrument tray. Then he grabbed a handful of Chien Na Wei's silver white hair and jerked it back, exposing her sweat-slicked neck.

"One more word about my father, and I will dig this blade into your carotid artery and let you bleed out in this fucking room," he growled.

But despite the threat, despite the blood that was dribbling from the corners of her mouth, she shot him a triumphant smirk. "What, Oliver? Can't handle hearing the truth?"

"Can't handle listening to your _lies_ ," he spat.

"Then lucky for you, they're not lies. I'm telling you the truth. We didn't kill him. In our opinion, Robert Queen was the best thing that ever happened for the Triad. But then again, it wasn't surprising when we found out he died."

She grinned evilly at him, and it made his blood run cold.

"After all, he always was too stupid to be in this business. He was bound to die eventually — I was just surprised it didn't happen sooner."

It was like the words had shut down something in Oliver's brain. He had maxed out so much on his rage, that he couldn't even feel it anymore. He couldn't feel _anything_ anymore. All he knew was that he wanted to make this bitch suffer.

He didn't even bother with the scalpel. He tossed it back on the instrument tray and the minute he was free of it, he landed punch after punch, kick after kick, hit after hit over every single inch of Chien Na Wei's body as he could. He didn't stop when he felt bones snap under his hands. He didn't pause when another spurt of blood met his latest blow. Her screams did nothing to slow him down. All he could think about was exacting as much pain as he could.

When he was finished, he took a step back. Every inch of her was covered in sweat and blood. Her head hung over her body, her scraggly hair a curtain over the injuries covering her face. She was barely holding onto consciousness, and the only sound in the room was her labored breathing.

With mechanical, leaden limbs, he slowly walked forward and forced her chin upward. He took in the swelling all over her face with vindictive pleasure.

"If you ever say my father's name again," he whispered lowly, "I will make you wish you were never born."

And with that, he landed one more punch across her face and she was immediately unconscious.

* * *

Since Oliver had taken over the captaincy, Anatoly had only ever been in the United States a handful of times. The Bratva leader had informed him that this was a good thing — it meant that Oliver was doing a good job, and he'd rarely had to come over to make sure he wasn't fucking things up.

So Oliver couldn't help the slight fear and dread gathering in the pool of his stomach as he stepped forward to greet Anatoly as he stepped out of the car.

"Ah, Oliver!" he shouted jovially, throwing his arms open. "It is good to see you again. You are looking very well."

"Thank you, Anatoly," he answered a little stiffly. "It's a pleasure to have you here."

"Yes, yes. And John, you too are looking well. Big as ever, I see," the man said, turning toward Oliver's adviser.

Digg's face was completely impassive as he stepped forward for the handshake. "I don't know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult."

"Oh, compliment, my dear friend! Compliment always!" he chuckled. "Well, please, let us go inside. I am in need of good food and drink. The journey has not been an easy one."

Yes, because a jaunt across the Pacific Ocean on a private jet had to be very difficult, Oliver thought sardonically to himself.

But regardless of his thoughts, he ushered Anatoly into the manor and a footman at the door immediately took Anatoly's coat. Together, the three men walked toward the dining room, where Raisa had already prepared dinner for them, and it included all of Anatoly's favorites.

Felicity was waiting for the three of them in the dining room, dressed in a conservative black dress. Her hair was tied up in her usual ponytail, but she had forgone her glasses in favor of her contacts and her blue eyes flickered toward Anatoly before landing on Oliver.

And just like that, all of his anxiety melted away. Felicity was there. She was there to center him, to ground him. Just her presence could calm him, better than any drug he could have ever taken.

God, he loved her.

"Hello, Mr. Knayzev," she greeted with a warm smile on her face. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Anatoly's eyes lit up at Felicity's presence and the sudden urge to grab her and hide her away from his boss' greedy eyes overtook Oliver. But instead, he contented himself to clenching his fists as the Bratva boss stepped forward to take her hand and press her knuckles against his lips.

"I believe the pleasure is all mine," he purred and it took all of Oliver's self control not to punch the older man. "And you, my dear? Who might you be?"

"I'm Felicity. Felicity Smoak."

"She's my executive assistant at QC," Oliver butted in. "She's also be invaluable to me in helping our organization reach its goals."

"Oh?" Anatoly asked mildly, but Oliver could see the calculation behind his dark eyes.

"Yes. She is quite the technology expert. She was the one who helped us take out Shado in the end."

"Well, my dear," Anatoly said warmly, but there was no mistaking the excitement in his expression. "I am glad then that Oliver has found you and brought you under our wing. Are you joining us for dinner?"

Felicity's eyes flickered to Oliver, almost like she was unsure. "If Oliver doesn't mind…?"

He gave her an encouraging smile. "Not at all. Please, take a seat, Felicity."

John stepped forward and pulled out her seat for her, which she took with exceeding grace, considering she was about to dine with a group of high ranking Bratva bosses. But it made Oliver all the more grateful that she was there.

Raisa came in a few minutes later with the drinks and the appetizers. Anatoly spent the first course regaling them with tales of life in Moscow. Bratva life was much different in the motherland, it seemed — there, the Bratva wasn't feared. It was _respected_. Over there, Anatoly was like a benevolent dictator. People offered him food, vodka, whatever they could find in order to pay for his protection, and he granted it with the magnanimity of a god.

No, the Bratva didn't earn its money in Russia. That's what their overseas interests were for. They didn't bother showing compassion overseas. They didn't need to, after all.

By the time they started on the first course, Anatoly finally turned to Oliver.

"So, Oliver," he began. "You have finally caught Chien Na Wei. But I hear you have not killed her yet?"

Oliver's hands tightened over his utensils, and the action pulled at the bruises and cuts on his knuckles.

"No, not yet," he answered. "I'm not about to let my father's killer get off so easily with a gun to the head or a knife to the chest."

Anatoly chuckled. "I must admit, I did not expect this kind of ruthlessness from you."

Oliver glanced up. Felicity was sitting across the table from him, but her eyes weren't on him. They were trained on her plate, like she was purposely avoiding his gaze.

"I don't let people off the hook when they hurt or kill the people who are closest to me," he said quietly.

Anatoly let out a loud, booming laugh. "Yes, indeed! Your quest for vengeance surprised me, but it was a welcome surprise. We were all sad to see Robert die, of course. But when you took over, our organization rose to prominence here, and there's no denying that the leadership role suited you."

Oliver swallowed hard and set down his fork. Suddenly he was no longer hungry.

"You have a real talent for this business," Anatoly continued, reaching forward to take a sip of his wine. "That is why I have decided — after you have disposed of Chien Na Wei, I am going to promote you, and bring you back to Moscow to oversee our international divisions."

Oliver felt his stomach drop down to his knees.

"What?" he gasped.

"You have proven yourself greatly," Anatoly said with the air of a grandfather doting on his favorite grandchild. "I want to bring you on to work for our main cell. You will have unlimited resources, unlimited funds. With you at the helm you can grow our organization the way you grew the influence of the Bratva here in Starling City. We now _own_ this city, thanks to you. Think of the thousands of possibilities there are all over the world!"

Every muscle in his body went numb at the thought.

No, he thought desperately to himself. He couldn't do that. The only reason he took on the captaincy after his father died was to get revenge. The only reason he extended the organization's influence in Starling City was because Anatoly said they weren't ready to go to war against the Triad. He didn't _want_ to be in charge of the international divisions! He didn't want to work out of Moscow, he didn't want the promotion, he didn't want any of it!

He turned his horrified gaze from his boss toward Felicity. Her expression was a perfect mirror of his, and he felt a little bit of comfort in knowing that she hated this idea as much as he did.

"I don't…" he struggled to come up with the words. "Anatoly, I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?" the man asked.

"Because...I was never supposed to do this long term," he explained. "I told you, I was only in this as long as it took me to destroy the Triad. And now we have."

Anatoly scoffed. "And now what? You are going to leave Bratva? We are your family, Oliver! We are your brothers. You cannot leave us. You have shown us your dedication. You have proven yourself. You cannot walk away now."

"But I never wanted this!" he shouted. "I never wanted to be captain, and I never wanted to be in charge of the international divisions!"

Anatoly sighed as he set down his wineglass. "Forgive me, Oliver...but if not Bratva, then what? You have been outed, yes?"

That stopped him in his tracks, but the older man continued.

"The world now knows you are Bratva. If I am not mistaken, the board of your company is now meeting to discuss a change in CEO. You do not have Queen Consolidated anymore. You do not have your reputation anymore. What else is there for you, Oliver?"

Anatoly gave him a sympathetic smile that Oliver didn't believe for a second.

"I know that you are reluctant. You were reluctant when I made you captain. But we are your brothers. We are your family. And we are all you have left."


	22. Chapter 22

**Phase six**

Felicity had never seen Amanda Waller in such a good mood.

It put her on edge more than anything she'd experienced in the past few months.

"So now that Queen has been outed, we have enough to move in and arrest him," Lyla concluded. "We've got public opinion on our side. Everyone wants his head on a platter."

Waller shook her head. "No. Now isn't the right time. We don't have enough evidence to convict, and we're not about to blow a three-year long op on him getting off because there wasn't enough evidence."

"What do you mean?" Lyla asked. "He admitted on tape that is the head of the Bratva! What more do you need?"

"Any lawyer worth their salt can say that Oliver was only admitting to being a Bratva captain under duress," Waller insisted. "He only said it to get Chien Na Wei to let that Colleen girl go. We have to wait."

"Wait for what?" Lyla demanded impatiently. "What do you want, for him to deliver himself to this office on a silver platter?"

"We should wait for him to kill Chien Na Wei," Waller declared.

The words made Felicity wince.

"Once he's killed her, we can move in and arrest him. We'll have enough evidence to at least make a murder charge stick," she said.

Lyla's jaw dropped. "Have you lost your mind?" she demanded. "You are advocating that we _knowingly_ allow murder to happen?"

"If we move in now, we'll have to arrest Oliver _and_ Chien Na Wei," Waller said coolly. "We don't have nearly enough evidence to indict Chien Na Wei, and that means she gets off scot free, and if you think for even a second that I'm going to let that happen, then you are _gravely_ mistaken."

"So you're going to let someone _kill_ her to avoid the judicial process?" Lyla shouted. "What kind of justice is that?"

"I am trying to prevent the hundreds of murders that would happen if she were to be released on the streets!" Waller shot back. "If it's between killing _her_ and letting her kill other innocent people, then I know where I stand."

Lyla turned a furious gaze toward Felicity. "What do you think about this?"

That was a good question. What _did_ she think? Frankly, the only thought she had in her mind was running out of this office. All she wanted was to get away. To disappear. To go back in time and prevent herself from ever taking on this stupid, suicidal mission. She didn't care if Waller had promised her her freedom. A lifetime of servitude in the FBI would have been preferable to this.

But then she thought back to the pain in Oliver's eyes when he said that Chien Na Wei had taken everything from him. How broken he looked. How much she wanted to hold him and protect him.

She knew how long and hard and how much he wanted revenge. And she also knew that at some point she would have to betray him and arrest him.

If she could give him just a sliver of what he wanted, then didn't he deserve that much, at least? Didn't he deserve the chance to face his father's murderer and finally get the revenge he had worked toward for five long years?

"Waller's right," she muttered. "Logically, it's our best plan."

Lyla's jaw clenched. She knew she was outnumbered.

"Fine," she spat. "You, John and I will meet and come up with a plan to arrest him once Chien Na Wei is dead. You're dismissed."

Felicity didn't need to be told twice. She fled Waller's office and made toward the exit as quickly as she could. Once she was in the elevator, she let out the breath she had been holding and slumped against the wall until she was sitting on the floor.

It was happening. The moment she had been dreading for weeks now was slowly approaching.

She was going to have to arrest him. She was going to have to watch his world come down around him. She was going to have to watch the betrayal on his face when the woman he loved handed him over to the feds.

Felicity closed her eyes, and two tears escaped the corners of her eyes, running down her cheeks. She thought back to the weekend, the forty-eight beautiful, uninterrupted hours that they spent together. No Bratva business. No QC business. No FBI business. It was just them. It was just Oliver and Felicity.

She had shared more about herself with him than she had ever shared with anyone. She felt safe in his arms as she described what it was like growing up in Las Vegas to a mother who loved her with all her heart, but didn't understand her. She described how after Cooper had sold her out, she'd never find anyone who loved her, _really_ loved her. She told him that she never thought she was ever capable of being loved.

So when Oliver whispered to her that he loved her, it felt like such a relief. But it also felt like a pair of hands closing around her neck.

The guilt was eating her alive.

Felicity made it back to the manor in record time. John was already waiting for her as she pulled into the driveway.

"Oliver is in the conversation room and Anatoly is taking a tour of Bratva assets in Starling City," he told her under his breath as he escorted her into the manor.

Translation: we can talk without fear of getting caught.

She nodded curtly as they went out to the deck in the backyard. Hardly anyone ever went out there, so they'd be safe. Once they were alone, she explained the plan to her partner — how Waller wanted to wait to bring in Oliver until Chien Na Wei was dead. Then they could nail him for murder.

John looked just about as thrilled with that idea as his fiancee.

"Fine, but we'll have to do it soon then," he said in a clipped voice. "You heard Anatoly last night. He's planning on bringing Oliver to Moscow the minute Chien Na Wei is dead."

She nodded. "That means we'll have to know when he plans on killing her."

John rubbed a tired hand over his face. "Yeah, good luck figuring that out. He's had her for forty-eight hours now, and she's still alive."

Felicity's stomach twisted at that. She always knew that Oliver wanted to make the woman suffer, but thinking about the kinds of things he was doing to her in that room was too much. She couldn't reconcile that ruthless man with the same man who kept telling her he loved her over and over again.

"He'll tell you, won't he?" she asked. "You're his adviser. He tells you everything."

"Well lately he's been pretty tight-lipped," John answered grimly. "I can't tell what he's thinking at any given moment. In fact, he's turned to you for your advice more than he's turned to me in the past few weeks."

Felicity looked down at her feet as the guilt welled up inside of her once more.

"Hey, are you all right?" he asked. "You look kind of queasy."

To her horror, tears sprang up in her eyes and she couldn't do anything to stop them. "I don't know if I can do this, John," she wept.

A comforting hand came down on her shoulder. "Hey," he said softly. "Take a deep breath. Tell me what's going on. You can tell me."

Felicity did as she was directed. She let her lungs expand then contract as she tried to come up with the words to explain it all.

"Oliver...Oliver and I, we...we're sleeping together. And he told me he loved me."

There it was. She finally said it. The words that she refused to acknowledge were out there, in the open, hanging between her and her closest friend.

She held her breath as she waited for his reaction. Was he going to sympathize? Was he going to hug her and tell her everything was going to be all right? Or was he going to yell at her for being so freaking careless?

The longest beat in the world passed as she held her breath, waiting for his reaction. Then, finally he opened his mouth.

"Felicity, are you serious?" he demanded. "You're _sleeping_ with him?"

So it was going to be the angry, disbelieving reaction.

The guilt doubled in her gut and she closed her eyes and pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead.

"I know," she whispered. "I know."

"You know?" he hissed. "You _know_? You _know_ how incredibly stupid a decision that was? You _know_ that you might have completely fucked up our mission? You _know_ that you compromised your credibility with the Bureau?"

"I don't care about my credibility with the Bureau!" she shot back as she lifted her head to glare at him. "And you don't understand! It's not like I...it's not that I'm just _sleeping_ with him, it's just…"

"Felicity," he whispered. She looked up and his eyes were filled with a mix of accusation and wonder. "Are you in love with him?"

More tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't _know_!" she cried. "I don't know, OK? All I know is that this feels wrong now! And I don't know if I can do this anymore!"

John's eyes hardened and that was when she knew that she would gain no sympathy from him. "Felicity, I have been on this op for three years now. Three _years_. And I'm not about to let you ruin this collar for me, do you understand?"

She swallowed. "John, weren't you the one who said you didn't know whose side you were on anymore?" she asked desperately. She was looking for anything, grasping at straws to help her make her case. "You said it yourself! I know you feel the same way, that it's hard to tell the bad guys from the good guys!"

He huffed and looked away. "The good guys are the ones who aren't letting people die," he bit out.

"What about Chien Na Wei?" she shot back. "We're sacrificing her. We're letting _her_ die just to take Oliver in! Don't you see how wrong that is? If we're willing to do that, how does that make us any better than the Bratva?"

John turned his cold eyes on her. "You want to know how we're different from the Bratva? Fine." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. A few taps and swipes and he held the screen to her.

Felicity gasped at the image. It was the picture of a face — a bruised, bloody, swollen face. And the only reason she could tell that it was Chien Na Wei was because of the signature silver white hair.

"Oliver did this to her yesterday," he said grimly. "That was _after_ he pulled out two of her teeth. The photo also doesn't show the broken ribs, the collapsed lung and the ruptured eardrum."

She felt abruptly unsteady, like the ground wasn't enough to keep her upright anymore.

"You never did see what he did to Ivo, did you?" John continued. "How he ran a knife all the way through his hand in order to get him to confess to a crime he didn't commit?"

Felicity shook her head and closed her eyes. No. No, she couldn't believe this. She couldn't believe any of this.

"Listen to me, Felicity," John said lowly. "We might not always make the best decisions, but we don't do _this_ to people. We're not the ones who torture people for information or even for _fun_. We are on the side of the American people. We are here to _protect_ the American people. The Bratva and everyone in this organization are here to exploit them."

He grabbed her chin and forced Felicity to face him. Her eyes opened and she saw John fixing her with the hardest expression she'd ever seen.

"Don't you ever, _ever_ forget that."

* * *

Later that evening, Felicity was sitting in the den with her laptop. She knew Oliver and John were in his office with Anatoly, discussing strategies for a peaceful transfer of power to the next captain once Oliver went to Moscow. And since John was in those meetings, there was no need for her to sit in on them.

Oh, who was she fooling? she thought bitterly to herself. She was avoiding Oliver because she couldn't look him in the eye. Not after she'd seen what he did to Chien Na Wei.

If he found out who she really was, would he do the same to her? Would all his "I love yous" still count if he realized she had been betraying him this whole time?

She couldn't do this, she thought to herself. She couldn't keep dwelling on this. Digg was right. The Bratva were the bad guys. They were a menace to the American public, and it was their job to get rid of them.

With a slightly renewed sense of purpose, she logged on to the Bratva network she had secured ever since she started working undercover. Since Anatoly arrived, he had asked her to add him to the same network, and idly she went through the motions of hacking into his communiques.

There wasn't a lot out of the ordinary. A lot of messages to his captains all over the world and other associates in Moscow. Felicity mostly ignored those.

She steadily flipped through all of the communiques, not spending much time on any of them. But then a name caught her attention and she came to a pause.

 _Subject: Robert Queen_.

Her interest piqued, she immediately clicked on the message. It was from a person named Agent 045.

 _Capt. Robert Queen has been ignoring Bratva duties in favor of business ventures. Recommend immediate termination and replacement._

Felicity's eyes widened.

Immediately she scrolled to read Anatoly's reply.

 _Suggestions for replacement?_

Agent 045 responded, _Ivo is logical choice, but is too bloodthirsty and power hungry. Robert's son, Oliver, would also be good. Has a good mind for business strategy. But also lacks sufficient motivation. O has also repeatedly expressed reluctance of being a part of Bratva in the past. Would be difficult to convince him otherwise._

Felicity felt goosebumps raise on her arms.

Anatoly replied, _Oliver does have good strategic mind. He also has soft heart. But we can use that to our advantage. As for his reluctance...I'm sure we can find a way to see reason._

That was the end of that particular communique. Felicity immediately searched for the next one, and it was a message to a group of people that Felicity could only assume were his own advisers.

 _Re: Robert Queen and the future of Pacific Northwest_

 _We have come to the unfortunate conclusion that Robert Queen has not been fulfilling his duties to this brotherhood and therefore must be eliminated. Our strategy is to have him killed, but frame it on the Triad, to make it look as if they killed him._

 _This will do two things: first, it will allow Robert's son, Oliver, to take over the captaincy. Oliver has a very good mind for strategy and business, and he is the best person to strengthen our hold in the United States._

 _Second, Oliver is dedicated to his father. Once his father is gone, his dedication will shift to this organization and he will stop at nothing for revenge. As you all know, the Triad is our biggest competition in this area. If we frame the Triad as Robert Queen's murderers, Oliver will do everything in his power to destroy them. Then, with the Triad out of the way, we will finally hold sole control of the Pacific Northwest._

And just like that, all the oxygen in the room had completely disappeared.

The Triad never killed Robert Queen.

It was the Bratva the whole time.

The _Bratva_ killed Oliver's father. And they used Oliver's grief to build their empire. They used Oliver's love and dedication to his father to turn him into a cold-blooded killer.

"Oh my God," Felicity whispered.

This couldn't be. This _couldn't be._

Closing her laptop, she pushed it as far away from her as possible as she buried her face into her hands. She kept trying to push the words she'd just read out of her brain, but it was no use — her cursed photographic memory kept bringing them back, over and over again. She couldn't escape them. There was nowhere to hide from this knowledge.

The Bratva killed Oliver's father, and he had spent five years of his life searching for revenge against an organization that hadn't even been a part of it.

It seemed that, for once, Chien Na Wei had told the truth.

Suddenly, Felicity's eyes wrenched open. Chien Na Wei!

 _Shit_.

Oliver still believed she was responsible for his father's death! He'd been torturing her for the past forty-eight hours. Eventually he was going to kill her. And when he killed her, Felicity would have to arrest him.

The thought made her panic.

"No," she whispered to herself in horror.

This was all built on a lie. A terrible, horrific lie that would ruin his life more than it already had. And for as flawed a person as Oliver Queen was, she couldn't let this be the end. Not for him. Not when he'd been through so much pain already.

With purpose in her veins, she threw herself off the couch and took her laptop with her. Then, she pulled out her headphones and checked the bugs she'd put in Oliver's office so long ago. She activated them just to listen briefly, just to make sure that Oliver wasn't going anywhere for a while.

Once she was certain that he and Anatoly would stay holed up in that office, she immediately made a run for the basement, where she knew the conversation room was.

She'd never actually _been_ in the conversation room before. She knew what generally happened in that room and she'd made it a point to avoid it as much as possible — thankfully, she'd never been required to go down there.

Until now.

After she punched in the passcode into the security keypad, the door opened up to a long, dimly lit hallway. With some trepidation, she stepped forward and kept going until she reached the end of it. There were two footmen stationed outside of the room, both of them following her with their eyes as she approached.

She tried to ignore their presence, but the minute her hand touched the doorknob, the one on the left grabbed her wrist.

"You shouldn't be here, ma'am," he said in a low, gruff voice.

"I have to go in there," she insisted. "I need to see the prisoner."

"We can't let you," was his only reply.

She drew herself up to her fullest height which, unfortunately, wasn't very much. "Listen," she bit out. "I'm here on business for Oliver. Do you understand? I need to get in there to talk to Chien Na Wei _right now_."

The man hesitated. "Mr. Queen consented to this?"

"Yes," she growled. She didn't even need to try and inject any authority into her voice. Her desperation to talk to Chien Na Wei before the meeting ended upstairs was enough to make the footman take her seriously.

The two men exchanged glances, and eventually came to a reluctant conclusion. The footman who'd been talking to her released her wrist.

"I think we should go in there with you," he said.

She scoffed. "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Stay out here."

And with that, Felicity wrenched open the door knob and let herself into the room.

The first thing she noticed was the stench. It was almost indescribable — a mix of blood, sweat and decay. The smell was enough to make her want to gag immediately.

The second thing she noticed was the slumped over figure still chained to the steel chair in the corner. An instrument tray stood next to her, with two bloody teeth lying next to the glinting tools. Some of them, she saw, were stained red.

Her stomach roiled even more at the sight but she immediately pushed the sensation down. She didn't have much time.

"Chien Na Wei?" she demanded. Her voice didn't echo like it might have in any other empty room — instead the sound fell almost immediately, the soundproofed walls absorbing her words.

The slumped figure stirred very slightly. She lifted her silver head and Felicity had to dig her nails into her palms to stop her from gasping at the sight of her face.

This was the evidence of Oliver's wrath. This was what he was capable of.

She clenched her eyes shut as the fear started to take hold in her chest. No, she thought desperately to herself. _No_. This wasn't the Oliver she cared for. That man was so much more than this. That man would never tie down a defenseless woman and beat her within an inch of her life.

This was the man the Bratva turned him into.

And she had to do what she could to turn him back. To undo all that damage.

"Well, well," the Triad leader said faintly. It surprised Felicity that the woman was still capable of even speaking. "If it isn't Oliver Queen's secretary."

Felicity's fists tightened as she stepped forward. "Listen to me," she commanded. "Were you telling the truth? When you told Oliver that the Triad didn't kill his father?"

Chien Na Wei chuckled weakly. "Why would I lie?"

"Considering you've never told the truth before in your life," she retorted, "you can see how it's an understandable question."

The beaten woman shook her head. "I was not lying. I was telling the truth. We had no reason to kill Robert Queen. He was not a threat to us."

Having spent a good chunk of her adult life working at the FBI, she learned quickly how to tell if someone was lying. Even in her diminished and clearly weakened state, Chien Na Wei had fixed her with a steady gaze that never wavered as she declared that the Triad did not kill Robert Queen.

She was telling the truth, and it was just as Felicity feared.

"Shit," she muttered.

The next thing she knew, her feet started moving on their own. They carried her right out of the conversation room, back down that long hallway and out of the basement. The rest of her body was numb, but her feet kept moving because her mind was clear of everything but one, singular purpose: to find Oliver.

She reached his suite in seconds, and sure enough, he was standing there, his back to her as he stared out the window onto the massive grounds of the Queen Manor.

Her arrival made him turn around and a smile immediately graced his face. Felicity's heart was already pounding out a jagged rhythm in her chest, but the way he looked at her made her feel like her entire body was on fire.

He approached her, but as he got closer the smile slid off his face only to be replaced with a frown.

"Felicity?" he asked cautiously. "Felicity, are you OK?"

She closed her eyes and tried to take in steady, even breaths. Making sure the door was shut behind her, she clenched her fists at her side to steady her shaking limbs.

She had to tell him. She _knew_ she had to tell him. But how could she? How could she be the one to deliver the news that the last five years of his life had been a lie?

How could he still love her after she told him?

"Hey." His whisper caressed her ear and her eyes flew open. The only thing she could really register was that he was standing right in front of her, his hands ghosting over her shoulders and his head bent close to her ear. "Felicity, what's wrong?"

To her horror, tears sprang to her eyes. "Oliver…"

His arms snaked around her waist as he gazed into her eyes. "Felicity? Come on, love. Tell me what's wrong."

Her eyes shut closed again as a lance of pain shot through her at the epithet.

"Oliver," she whispered, "I...I have to tell you something. But I'm afraid it'll make you hate me."

She opened her eyes and he was frowning down at her. "There is nothing you could say that could make me hate you."

Oh, but how wrong he was.

She took in a deep breath through her nostrils. "Oliver, you _can't_ kill Chien Na Wei."

His eyes widened in surprise. "What?"

And like a breach in a dam, her words came out in a rush. She couldn't do anything to stem the tide.

"You can't kill Chien Na Wei!" she said desperately. "Please tell me you won't kill her, please!"

He stepped away and Felicity felt a sharp ache, like her body automatically missed the proximity of his.

"What are you talking about? She killed my father!"

She shook her head so hard she could feel her brain rattle. "No, she didn't! She didn't!"

She surged forward to grab him by the face to force him to look at her. "Oliver, listen to me! I hacked Anatoly's communiques this evening when you were in that meeting — "

"You did WHAT?" he shouted.

But she continued like he hadn't interrupted. "He was lying to you! He was lying the whole time! Anatoly was the one who ordered the hit on your father! He just framed the Triad so that you'd want to get revenge and wipe them out! He wanted to _use_ you to make the Bratva stronger!"

Oliver's eyes squeezed shut as he wrenched his face from her grasp. "No!" he yelled. "No, that's a lie! A _lie_!"

"It's not, Oliver!" she cried desperately. "I can show you, I can show you the proof! They were using you this whole time! They just wanted you to wipe out the Triad for them so they could take control of Pacific Northwest!"

He wrenched his eyes open to glare at her. His expression felt like a knife to her lungs and it made it all the more difficult to drag oxygen into them.

"No. No, you're wrong. Chien Na Wei killed my father! She killed him, and I'm going to be the one to kill her!"

Felicity couldn't help it now. The tears fell freely down her cheeks. "Oliver, _please_ ," she begged. "You can't kill her! You can't!"

"Why not?" he demanded. "Why are you trying to stop me?"

She grabbed onto him again, forcing him to face her. "Listen to me! If you kill Chien Na Wei, the FBI will arrest you!"

He scoffed and tried to pull out of her grip, but she held him all the tighter.

"You don't know that!"

Her heartbeat stopped for a second. Just one second. That was all it took for her to decide to throw it all away. To throw away her future, her integrity, her freedom.

But it meant saving Oliver from becoming the monster he always feared. And that was enough for her.

"Yes, they will!" she whispered. "They _will_ , and I know because...because _I'm_ FBI."


	23. Chapter 23

Felicity watched the sun rise over the horizon as she sat at the table on the deck. She had a blanket wrapped around her and a mug of rapidly cooling coffee in her hands, but she hadn't taken a sip.

She was exhausted. She hadn't slept a single wink last night, and it was because she had officially, completely fucked everything up.

How she wished she could have escaped everything, but there was nowhere she could go. Nothing she could do. She was trapped.

She closed her eyes as her perfect memory played the scene over and over again in her head.

 _There was a long, long pause that followed Felicity's confession. She watched in panic as Oliver kept blinking rapidly, as his brain tried to process all of the information she had just thrown at him. But the longer it took him, the heavier her gut became, weighed down with all the guilt and dread she had kept trapped inside of her for months now._

" _You're_ what _?" he whispered._

 _Tears welled up in Felicity's eyes as she dropped the hands that held onto him._

" _I'm with the FBI," she repeated. "I have been for years now, and I was assigned to go undercover and work for you."_

 _Oliver was shaking his head before she could finish. "No. No, you're not. You're_ not _. You're messing with me, right? Felicity, please, tell me you're messing with me."_

 _Oh how she wished. How she_ wished _that was the case._

 _Instead of answering, she grabbed her laptop and pulled it open. She clicked on her browser and went through all the prompts to log onto the FBI network._

 _At the very top of the screen, it read: WELCOME, AGENT SMOAK_

 _Without a word, she turned it toward him and watched as the news finally connected._

 _She was FBI. And she had been sent to destroy him._

 _The look on his face would haunt her for the rest of her life._

" _No," he shook his head. "No! NO!"_

 _Quickly closing her laptop and setting it aside, she surged forward and grabbed his arm. "Oliver, listen to me!" she shouted. "You_ can't _kill Chien Na Wei! If you kill her, I will have no choice but to arrest you!"_

" _Get away from me!" he screamed as he wrenched his arm from her grasp. "Why should I trust you? Why should I believe_ you _?"_

 _His words felt like a punch in the gut. Her muscles went limp and she didn't bother trying to stop him or trying to chase after him as he stalked past her. He wrenched the door open and fled, and she didn't follow him._

That was the last time she saw him. She spent the rest of the night curled up in the room she'd originally been assigned, the room that she hadn't slept in since the night of Chien Na Wei's failed capture by the docks. It hadn't been that long, really, but it no longer felt like her room. The sheets felt cold. The pillow felt hard.

Without Oliver there, without him wrapping his arms around her, without him sharing his warmth, she felt incomplete. Out of place. Cold.

A stream of tears escaped her eyes and trailed down her cheeks.

God, how she'd fucked up everything. She betrayed Oliver. She betrayed the FBI. It was a miracle that she was still alive right now, that Oliver hadn't ordered one of his footmen to kill her, or dragged her to the conversation room to do it himself.

But maybe she had known all along that he wouldn't. Or maybe she'd just _hoped_. Because she knew that person, that good, kind and generous person was still there, underneath all the awful things the Bratva made him do. She believed.

The sun had cleared the horizon now. It still hung low over the trees and the sky was still a little pink, but it was officially morning. She could practically feel the stuffy mansion behind her coming to life as people got up and moved around. Soon enough, the news of her betrayal would make the rounds. And then she'd finally be freed from this horrible limbo as she waited for whatever would happen to her next.

Felicity was about to finally set her now completely ice cold mug of coffee down and walk back upstairs to her room, but a muffled bang echoed through the entire first floor and she was immediately on her feet and on high alert.

She ran toward the door that led to the kitchen and found Raisa, her eyes wide with panic.

"Get down!" Felicity shouted as she grabbed the woman by the shoulders and pushed her down and covered her head.

"Miss Felicity?" she whimpered as more bangs and loud thuds shook the entirety of the massive Queen mansion. "What's going on?"

Her chest tightened. "I don't know, Raisa," she whispered. She heard the unmistakable snaps of gunshots and felt her blood pounding in her head.

Felicity did the only thing she could think to do — he ran to the pantry where she knew Oliver had stashed a couple of firearms (literally, there were guns hidden all over the damn place) and grabbed a Glock.

"Raisa," she muttered as she unclipped the safety and shoved a magazine into the chamber. "I need you to stay here, OK? Can you do that for me?"

The frightened woman nodded as she curled up more tightly in the corner.

Once Felicity was sure that Raisa was hidden, she emerged from her hiding place and stalked slowly toward the source of the noises. She heard shouts and stray gunshots and every muscle in her body tensed. With her arms straight and the barrel of the gun pointed at the floor she stalked forward.

She got to the corner where the hallway met the front den and peeked over it. The sight made her gasp.

The foyer and the front room was filled with SWAT team agents, armed with guns and batons and shields, taking down a horde of surprised Bratva footmen. They cut them down with a savageness she'd never seen, shooting first and not even bothering to ask questions.

The commotion had brought all of the guards to the foyer, but the SWAT members had been waiting for them. They took them down with ease and the bodies of the Bratva footmen started to pile up all over the place, making the foyer look like some sick parody of a battlefield.

After what felt like ages, the footmen stopped coming, and Felicity had to imagine that it was because there wasn't a single one left on the massive grounds. With shaking limbs, she emerged from her hiding place, her gun still pointed warily in front of her.

As she approached, the SWAT team members started to break off from formation to explore the rest of the house. Some tramped up the stairs while others broke off into the hallway that led to Oliver's study. All of them, it seemed, were taking their directions from the member in the very front.

Once she got close enough to be in earshot, the team member in the front removed the helmet and she gasped and her arms immediately fell to her side.

It was Lyla.

"Agent Michaels?" she demanded. "What is this?"

Lyla glanced over and Felicity felt her muscles go cold at the other woman's glare.

She swallowed down her fear and instead tried to summon what little courage she had left. "What _is_ this?" she repeated. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"We had to move up the timetable for the raid," Lyla answered coolly.

No, she thought desperately to herself. Oliver had killed Chien Na Wei last night.

"And why wasn't I informed?" she asked, trying to hold on to the semblance of resolve. "This is John's and my op!"

"Given the circumstances," she said with a raised eyebrow, "we didn't think it would be appropriate."

The circumstances, Felicity thought with some dread.

Lyla knew. John had told her.

"Once we've secured this place, we're going back to headquarters. And believe me when I say, you need to prepare yourself for a _very_ long conversation, Agent Smoak."

Her entire body was filled with dread.

She was so very, very screwed.

It took the SWAT team another three hours to secure the entire mansion, and Felicity was on tenterhooks for every single one of those hours. She oscillated between hoping they'd arrest Oliver last and hoping he'd managed to run as far away as possible. But when halfway through their search of the property, two SWAT team members emerged from the main hallway of the first floor, hauling him between their kevlar-clad bodies.

He looked unharmed. There weren't any signs of a struggle, no cuts or blooming bruises anywhere on his face. It seemed he came with them willingly. She felt some small relief to know that he wasn't in any physical pain.

But then her heart leapt into her throat as she watched them pass, and for a brief, fleeting moment, his eyes met with hers. She held her breath in that second, rooted to the spot by the pure anger in his expression.

He hated her. That much was clear in his expression.

The moment passed and the SWAT members escorted him out of the house. It didn't make the invisible hands closing in around her throat disappear.

Tears welled up in her eyes. She knew it would happen. She knew the second he found out who she was, those three words he whispered to her over and over again would disappear and she would be left in the cold once again. It was inevitable, like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

It was inevitable that all the men in her life would eventually stop loving her.

Twenty minutes after Oliver had been taken into custody, the blaring alarms of an ambulance alerted her to its presence outside the front entrance of the mansion. She furrowed her brows in confusion as the paramedics raced through the foyer and down the long hallway. But half an hour later they came back with a body loaded on a stretcher with John following behind them.

As the stretcher got closer, Felicity peered at the body wrapped in blankets and obscured by all the wires. Then her eyes went wide when she realized who it was.

It was Chien Na Wei.

"She's still alive?" she whispered.

John nodded grimly. "She's not in great shape, but she's hanging in there."

He stayed behind as two SWAT members stepped forward to escort the ambulance back to the hospital. Felicity stood in the foyer beside him, her arms wrapped around her body and her muscles numb from everything that happened.

Oliver had been arrested and taken in. But Chien Na Wei was still alive.

And John had told Lyla.

"Why?" she whispered.

John sighed. He didn't need her to explain her pleading question.

"After you told me that you were sleeping with Oliver, I put a bug on you," he admitted. "I heard your conversation with him last night. How you made yourself and warned him not to kill Chien Na Wei. So I told Lyla and Waller and they both made the decision to move in."

Tears trailed down her cheeks and she closed her eyes. "You had me bugged?" she asked in a soft, choked voice. She didn't even bother trying to hold in her betrayal.

"Yes," he answered. There was no hesitation in his voice.

Felicity didn't need an explanation. She knew why he did it. If it had been the other way around, she probably would have done the same thing.

But that didn't make the knowledge hurt any less.

He lifted a tentative hand and put it on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Felicity. You know I've been on this op for three years. I wasn't going to let anyone get in the way of finally nailing the Bratva."

She knew he was right. She knew that he had done the right thing to save the mission. Even try to save her from herself. She'd gotten in too far, too deep in this, and she knew he was trying to pull her from the brink.

The problem was, she had already fallen off the cliff. There was no turning back for her.

She was too far gone.

* * *

Waller was suspiciously OK with the fact that Felicity had been sleeping with Oliver Queen.

After the mansion had been secured, the three of them returned to headquarters and settled into Director Waller's office. There, she explained the circumstances of her betrayal. She laid it out, all clinical and bare, using jargon only FBI agents used.

It helped numb her, a little bit. It distanced her from the strength of her despair. It didn't erase the look of hatred Oliver shot her from resurfacing in her perfect memory every few minutes, but it stalled the inevitable breakdown she had coming her way.

John's face had been locked down in stony silence since they got back. Lyla's scowl grew darker and darker as Felicity gave her explanation.

But Waller's face remained impassive the entire time. It made Felicity fidget, trying to predict what the ruthless director was thinking.

When she had finished her story, everyone in the room went very quiet. Felicity watched Waller with wary eyes, but the woman just sat behind her desk, her arms crossed over her chest as she thought.

"All right," she finally said.

Lyla's jaw dropped. "'All right?'" she repeated incredulously. "'All _right_?' That's all you have to say? Agent Smoak put this entire operation in danger and all you can say is 'all _right_?'"

"Sit down, Agent Michaels," Waller snapped. "I wasn't finished. While it's true that Agent Smoak broke protocol, we can still use this to our advantage."

Felicity felt sick. Of course, she thought bitterly to herself. She should have known. Waller wasn't OK with this out of some sense of mercy. She was thinking of how to best use her relationship with Oliver to her sick, twisted ends.

"In the raid of the Queen Mansion, we took Chien Na Wei into custody," she began, "but we also took Anatoly Knyazev."

John's eyebrows shot up his forehead. "Anatoly's not an American citizen. Charging him is going to be a nightmare. And considering Russian/U.S. relations at the moment, it might be damn near impossible."

"Not unless we had an unimpeachable case," Waller said grimly. "That would require mountains of evidence. Now we already have most of the Bratva's electronic records. But if we could get someone on the inside to turn state's witness, we would have an airtight case."

Felicity's heart started pounding when she realized what the director was saying.

"You want me to convince Oliver to turn state's witness?" she asked, her eyes wide with shock.

"Yes," the director nodded. "In exchange for immunity."

"WHAT?" Lyla shouted. She was on her feet in a second. "You can't be serious!"

"Agent Michaels," Waller said warningly, but Lyla was far from finished.

"We spent _three years_ and countless resources to try and bring this guy in! And you're going to let all of that go if he just rolls over on his boss? Are you _kidding me_?" she demanded.

"Agent Michaels!" Waller shouted.

"No!" Lyla returned. "No, I've had enough of this! I've watched you twist and twist this mission over and over again, ignoring any and all decency to get this guy. Well it ends now! You're not offering Oliver Queen immunity, and I will go to the Bureau director if I have to!"

Waller raised a perfectly penciled eyebrow. "You do that," she said coolly. "And then he can tell you the same thing. If we can nail Anatoly Knyazev, then we need to do everything in our power to do it. He is the grand prize. He is the king in this game of chess, and if we have to lose a bishop to get him, then so be it."

Lyla's expression turned sour as she glared at the director. Then, without another word, she turned on her heel and stomped out of the office.

But the argument hardly registered with Felicity. She remained glued to her chair. The minute Waller had said the word "immunity," it was like her muscles had completely locked up. She couldn't move. She couldn't think. She couldn't breathe.

There was a chance. There was a chance that Oliver wouldn't go to jail. That he could live his life and put the Bratva behind him and become the man she knew he was deep down inside.

"As I was saying," Waller said, as if Lyla hadn't just left the office in a huff, "we have a chance to nail Knyazev for good, but only if Oliver agrees to turn state's witness. If he doesn't, we will prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law, and the two of you — " she gestured to Felicity and John, " — will be expected to testify against him."

No. She couldn't think about that.

Waller fixed Felicity with a steady, cool stare. "Do you understand me, Agent Smoak?"

Her fists clenched in her lap.

"Yes, Director Waller."

When the meeting with Waller was over, Felicity and John walked out of her office. She was still in shock over the latest turn of events — given everything that had happened in the past few weeks, she really expected to be back in jail for fucking up the mission.

"You OK?" John asked quietly.

She shook her head in a kind of numb haze. "I don't know," she answered. "So much has happened in the past twenty-four hours and I can't...I can't process it all."

"Yeah," he murmured. "I didn't expect for all of this to go down this way either."

She looked up at him, and to her surprise, she saw a little bit of guilt on his face.

"What do you make of all this?" she asked him. "Are you in Lyla's camp? Do you think it's wrong to offer him immunity?"

John sighed. "I can see both sides. She's right, we worked for years on this operation to bring him in. _I_ worked for years on this operation to bring him in."

"But?" Felicity prompted him.

"But...Oliver, he's…" he sighed again. "Felicity, hearing you talk about him like that, in there, it made me remember the times when it didn't feel like it was undercover. When he was...well, when he was less singular-minded than he has been in the past six months. You know, he didn't really start to spiral until after that children's benefit, when Moira got shot."

She nodded. "I remember."

"You didn't know him for very long before that happened, but I worked with him for two and a half years before that. And he was...well, he was lighter. He was more generous, he was kinder. He seemed less burdened. There were times when I even considered him my friend. Yes, he was looking for revenge against the Triad, but his anger and grief hadn't made him crazy yet. It was like watching his mother almost get killed set the boulder rolling. And then, when we almost lost _you_...it just got worse until I thought it was impossible for him to come back."

Felicity bit her lip. "So then what makes you so conflicted? If it's impossible for him to come back, then wouldn't it just be safer to keep him behind bars? The way that Lyla wants?"

He shook his head. "Didn't you see it earlier during the raid? He didn't kill Chien Na Wei."

"So? What does that have to do with anything?"

"Felicity, he's thought about _nothing_ but killing her for six months. And for four and a half years before that, it had been his goal. But one request from you, and he backed off. He didn't touch her. That was _you_."

It was Felicity's turn to shake her head. "No it wasn't. I just told him the truth. I told him that Anatoly was the one who staged Robert's death."

"That's what I'm saying. He listened to you." He smiled a little. "Hearing you talk about him in there, it made me realize in the couple of weeks that you two had been sleeping together, that I could see glimpses of who he used to be. You brought that back out of him. If there's any hope of him coming back from this monster he's become, I think you're it."

She closed her eyes as John's words washed over her. They were full of hope and optimism.

"If he takes this immunity deal, then he walks. The guy that _you_ worked to take down for three years just gets off scot free, without paying for any of his crimes. Weren't you trying to convince me just yesterday that he's the bad guy and I can never forget that?"

"If he takes this immunity deal then it's hardly nothing," he answered. "If he takes this immunity deal, then it means we get Anatoly. The head of the _entire_ Bratva. That means we have cut the monster off at the head and it will spell out the destabilization of cells all over the country, not just the Pacific Northwest."

"They'll just come back."

"And we'll worry about that then. But imprisoning Anatoly is not something to sneeze at."

She opened her eyes to look carefully at him. "You would trade Anatoly for Oliver? Really?"

"If it meant that we could bring him back from what he's become, yes."

He reached over to squeeze her hand. "I know I was harsh yesterday. I know I said things that frightened you. But if I had known the extent of your feelings — if I had known how much you love him, then I wouldn't have said any of that."

A lump rose in her throat, and it made it impossible to breathe for a fraction of a second.

Love. She loved him.

The minute John said it, she knew it was true. It was the reality she'd been running away from since he first kissed her in his office when she woke him up from that nightmare. She'd been trying to flee these feelings for months now, but they only caught up to her. And now, she had nowhere to turn.

"I'm sorry for not having your back before, Felicity," he murmured. "But I have it now. After all, we are partners."

A tear escaped the corner of her eye and she squeezed his hand back. For the first time in twenty-four hours, she felt a tiny bit of hope blossoming in her chest.

"Partners," she nodded.

* * *

Felicity knew better than to try and visit Oliver the day he'd been arrested. So she waited the next day in the hopes that perhaps he had cooled off.

She was also trying to convince herself that she hadn't been terrified of the hate-filled look he shot her as the SWAT members were escorting him out of his own home.

She sat alone in the interrogation room as she waited for the correctional officers to bring him. They would be alone with two chairs and a table in between them — hell, there wouldn't even be anyone standing on the other side of the two-way mirror.

It would be just the two of them. Alone.

Well, except for the camera in the corner and the recording device pinned to her jacket.

She was fidgeting with the skirt of her conservative gray dress when the door opened. Her head immediately shot up and she watched with a clenched heart as a CO shoved Oliver Queen forward.

He was dressed in the typical orange jumpsuit, but for some unknown, godforsaken reason, he still looked incredibly handsome in it. It reaffirmed her theory that Oliver Queen could look good in anything.

Oliver scowled at her, not budging from the doorway.

"You're not my lawyer," he said in an accusing tone.

"I know," she murmured. "I just...I just wanted to talk to you."

The anger never left his face as he reluctantly trudged forward and sat down in the chair across from her. Then the CO left, the sound of the slamming door an ominous reminder of why she had come.

The two of them sat in uncomfortable silence. He glared at the table between them while she drank him in. Aside from his wardrobe he looked mostly the same, but there were bags under his eyes that she hadn't noticed before when he first walked in. And there was a gaunt paleness to his face, but that she attributed to the lighting.

He was still the most beautiful person she had ever beheld, and his physical presence made her heart ache. He was so close, but she couldn't touch him, and it was the only thing she wanted to do.

"Oliver, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry," she blurted out. "I'm so sorry. I never thought they would come and arrest you yesterday. It took me completely by surprise. I was told that they were waiting for you to kill Chien Na Wei, which is why I told you to hold off and now...well, here we are."

"Was that why you came here?" he demanded. "To apologize? Was that it? Because if so, it was a waste of time. I don't want to hear your apologies. I don't want to hear anything from you."

She clenched her fists in her lap. Of course she had been expecting that, but that didn't make it hurt any less.

"I understand why you don't want to forgive me," she said quietly. "But my apology wasn't the only reason I came here."

She reached down into the briefcase sitting next to her chair and pulled out a manila file folder. Then she slid it across the table for him.

"During the raid on the mansion, the FBI took Anatoly Knyazev into custody. The Justice Department is planning on charging him with multiple counts of drug and money laundering and racketeering, on top of all the murder charges."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "So?"

She took in a breath. "They have electronic evidence, thanks to our access to the Bratva's servers and electronic records. But in order to make an airtight case against him, we need a witness. We need you."

Oliver's arms immediately came to cross over his shoulders as he glared at her. He didn't say anything. He just glared.

The anger in her expression forced her to keep talking.

"Your testimony would make all the difference in the world, Oliver," she explained. "You could tell them how he runs the Bratva. How he brought in all the drugs into the country, all the prostitution and gambling and illegal arms. You can tell the jury how he _used_ you as a pawn to strengthen his organization. How he used you and your resources to kill people."

She swallowed.

"You can tell them how he killed your father."

His body tensed and she could see it right in front of her. Every muscle in his body was coiled like a spring and she was terrified of what would happen when it was released.

"If you agree to do it, if you agree to give evidence against Anatoly, the Justice Department will grant you immunity. They won't charge you with so much as a traffic ticket. You'd walk away from this whole mess and get to live a new life, free of all of it."

That must of surprised him, because his eyes suddenly went wide. But it was gone as quickly as it came, replaced only with disbelief.

"You're lying."

Her heart fell at those two words.

"No, I'm not," she insisted. "Believe me, I'm not. If you agree today, they'll take you to a safehouse where you'll be guarded twenty-four-seven until Anatoly's trial. But after the trial and after he's convicted, they'll put you in WitSec."

His jaw clenched and he glared at her. "Why should I trust you?"

She didn't think there was anything whole enough in her chest to break anymore. But she was wrong. The minute those words came out of his mouth, everything inside of her shattered.

"Oliver," she whispered, "I know...I know I betrayed you and your trust. But it wasn't...it wasn't always a lie for me. Hardly any of it was a lie for me."

"I don't believe you!" he shouted. She winced.

"Please, Oliver," she begged. "Please! Please take this deal!"

"Why?" he demanded. "Why do you want me to do this? So _you_ won't give me the lethal injection. Instead you'll turn me out on the streets where they'll find me anyway and kill me?"

"No!" The thought horrified her to her very core. "No, of course not! You'll be in witness protection! You'll be safe!"

"Forget it!" he shouted. "I'd rather die here in prison than live in hiding!"

She couldn't help it. Tears sprang to her eyes and clouded her vision of the man sitting in front of her. The thought of him dying jarred her so completely. It was liking brushing your hand against a red-hot iron — it was just the briefest contact, but it burned so much that it made you stay ten feet away at all times.

"Don't say that," she whispered. "Please, don't! Please take this deal, Oliver! I'm begging you, please take it!"

"Why does it matter to you?" he shouted. "You were trying to take me down this whole time! Isn't that what you wanted? To see me dead?"

"No! That's the last thing I want!"

"Then _what_?"

"I want you to be the man I know you're capable of being!" she screamed. "I saw it the first day I came to work for you! Even though it was under false pretenses, you never _once_ pretended to be anything you weren't around me! I saw it when you signed that card for Marty's wife, I saw it when you had me redirect all his hospital bills to you. I saw it when you spoke kindly to every single person who walked into your office! I saw it when your mother was shot, when you had dinner with your sister, when you helped Raisa clean up the kitchen. When you let Colleen go even though it meant outing you as Bratva to the whole world. Hell, when you even spared Chien Na Wei! I _know_ you are a good person, Oliver! I know it! Good people don't deserve to rot in prison for the rest of their lives! I can't let you! I _won't_ let you!"

He saw a flash of pain break through the angry expression, and for a brief moment, she felt a glimmer of hope. So she kept talking.

"You don't want to take the deal because you think if you stay in jail then that will somehow be the justice you deserve for everything you've done. But that isn't justice for anyone! That won't bring those people back to life! That won't undo all the drugs! And putting you in jail doesn't put an end to the Bratva's influence in the United States. The only thing that will do that is by putting Anatoly in jail and making sure he stays there! You're the only one who can do that!"

His eyes hardened at her words and Felicity felt her breath still in her lungs.

"Shut. Up," he growled.

The hot sting of his rejection was like a knife right in her gut. Against her will, the tears started flowing down her face.

"You once said that there wasn't anything I could do to make you stop loving me," she whispered. It was almost like an accusation, but she couldn't help it. She was too hurt. "What changed?"

"That was when I thought I knew you," he replied, his voice cold and unfeeling. It only served to twist the knife. "That was before I learned who you really were. And now that I see it, I don't want to have anything to do with you. I'm not taking this deal."

But she couldn't give up. She refused.

"You _do_ know me!" she insisted. "It was never a lie, what happened between us! I meant every word I ever said to you!"

He'd had enough. He stood from his seat and walked to the door of the room, without so much as glancing at her.

"I'm not taking the deal. Tell whoever you answer to that I'm going to rot in jail. Then get the hell away from me and never talk to me or look at me ever again."

He slammed his palm over the little buzzer next to the door. Seconds later, the CO opened it and escorted him out of the room, leaving Felicity all alone at the empty table, the unopened file still in front of her.

With shaky hands, she took the file and flipped it open. There was only one page in it, with one sentence. One simple sentence. The only thing she couldn't say out loud, not with the camera watching or the recording devices listening.

The only thing she wanted to tell him.

 _I love you_.


	24. Chapter 24

Ordinarily, criminal trials take forever to make it through the system. Lawyers use all sorts of tactics to delay as much as possible. Felicity's known some cases that didn't make it to trial for years after the initial arrest and indictment, especially when a client pleads not guilty.

Oliver's case was bucking tradition. It was so high profile that the Justice Department was doing everything it could to speed up the process. They had every spare assistant U.S. attorney from the region working on it, and the judge wanted to hear the case as quickly as possible — meaning he scheduled the first day of the trial just one month after arraignment.

She hadn't given up trying to get Oliver to take the deal. Since he refused to see her, she tried reaching out to his attorney, McKenna Hall. It took some time for the woman to believe her, but once she explained the whole situation, she seemed sympathetic.

Unfortunately, taking the immunity deal to McKenna didn't make Oliver any more eager to accept it.

"He won't tell me why," she said one day when they met over coffee. "Believe me, I've been trying."

Felicity rubbed her hands over her eyes. "Why?" she demanded. "Why is he being so damn...God, I can't believe this!" She slammed her fists down onto the table angrily. "If he doesn't even want to take the deal, why is he bothering to plead not guilty? I know the AUSAs are offering him plea deals. If he's so hellbent on staying in prison, why isn't he bothering to take one of those deals?"

"Oh, he's definitely wanted to," McKenna answered grimly. Then she sighed and glanced around her. "Look, I shouldn't be telling you this, considering you technically work for the other side, but I know how hard you've been trying to get him off the hook for this."

Felicity straightened in her seat. "What?"

"His mother and sister called from Switzerland. They begged him to do whatever he could to stay out of jail. If you ask me, I think he's just doing this for them."

Felicity's breath caught in her lungs. In all the chaos, she'd forgotten about Moira and Thea. Oliver had shipped his mother to neutral territory in Europe after she'd been shot, and he'd sent his sister after her once she was finished with the semester to make sure they didn't get hurt in the war with the Triad. It pained Felicity to think about how this must have been affecting his family, considering how much she liked both of them.

"If he's doing this for them, then why won't he take the damn immunity?" Felicity asked through gritted teeth.

McKenna leveled her with a look of intense pity. "Again, I shouldn't be telling you this...but I think he won't take the deal because he knows it's coming from you."

Felicity should have been used to the feeling of getting stabbed over and over again. But hearing McKenna once again reaffirm how much Oliver despised her was like a fresh wound opening up across her skin.

She took in a deep breath to steady herself as she stared down at her hands on the table in front of her.

"Is there any way," she began quietly, "that you could think of that I might be able to get him to accept this deal?"

McKenna sighed helplessly. "Honestly? I don't know. I mean, he's feeling betrayed right now, on top of all the guilt of realizing that he's been played by Anatoly and the Bratva. The part that feels the guilt makes him think he deserves to rot in jail, and that doesn't help the part that feels betrayed by you. And learning about John Diggle's double agent status _certainly_ didn't make it any easier."

Felicity flinched. Two weeks ago, John visited Oliver's cell and revealed that he, too, had been FBI. John said Oliver nearly tore apart his cell and had to be put in solitary until he calmed down.

"I understand that he wants to pay for the things he's done," she said. "I get that. But rotting in a jail cell? That's not justice. Not for anyone."

"Well, short of developing some kind of mind control software that will make him believe that, or building a time machine and going back in time so you won't betray him, I don't see him coming to that conclusion any time soon," McKenna said dryly.

Felicity let out a deep breath and slumped back in her seat. She was afraid that Oliver's stubborn nature would lead to an impasse like this — but at this point, she didn't know what else she could do.

McKenna took a sip of her coffee as she eyed the woman sitting across from her.

"Do you mind if I ask?"

Felicity looked up expectantly.

"I know that you're feeling...guilty, or whatever. And that you clearly care about him. But...I mean, why is it so important to you that he gets off the hook for this? You've _seen_ what he can do. What he's done to other people. You know he's guilty of all of it. Why are you trying so hard to get him out of jail?"

Felicity shook her head. It was a good question, and it was an answer she'd been contemplating for a while.

"You're right," she answered quietly. "I _do_ know what he's capable of, and I have seen what he can do first hand. But I've also seen the kindness. The generosity. The genuine love for other people. And I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that the goodness inside him is the real Oliver Queen."

She looked down at the cold coffee that remained in her cup as she struggled to find the rest of her words.

"He's a good person, McKenna. I know it. I've seen it. But the thing is, he's so damn hard on himself. He doesn't forgive himself for anything. And I know that if he goes to jail, he'll never forgive himself for this. And he'll lose hope. I can't let that happen to him."

Felicity grabbed her cup and chugged the rest of her coffee. Once she was finished, she stood from her chair and hitched the straps of her purse over her shoulder. Then she turned to stare at McKenna with the most serious expression she'd ever worn.

"And I don't just have feelings for him. I love him. That's why I need him to stay out of jail."

With that, she turned on her heel and marched out of the tiny coffee shop.

* * *

"So where are we with Queen?" Waller asked.

The three other people at the table turned to stare at Felicity and she immediately tensed up.

"Still nothing," she answered.

John sat directly on her right. They glanced at one another and in that fleeting second, Felicity could see the same worry and exasperation in his eyes that she felt in her heart.

It was a Friday. The trial started on Monday. And if Oliver didn't accept the immunity deal, he was almost certainly going to jail.

Adrian Chase, the lead AUSA on the case, just nodded grimly, almost like he'd been expecting her to say that. And maybe he did, but it made her resentment coil more tightly inside of her.

"Right. Well, if he's not going to take the immunity, then we're going after him. Agent Smoak, you're going to be the first witness we bring to the stand."

She nodded without a word. She'd expected as much, but it didn't make the thought of it hurt any less. Just thinking of going up on the stand and looking Oliver in the eyes as she implicated him in all of his Bratva doings made her palms sweat and hives break out over her skin.

Chase noticed her trepidation because he cocked his head so he could look her in the eye. "There's no need to be nervous, Agent Smoak. I am going to prepare you as thoroughly as possible so there are little to no surprises on Monday. That's why we're here today. We're going to do some testimony prep for you and Agent Diggle, OK?"

He'd completely misread their hesitation to be there, but it wasn't like she could tell him the truth — that the thought of taking the stand and pointing her finger at Oliver as a killer made her want to run as far away as possible.

For the next three hours, Felicity sat there as Chase made her relive the past six months she spent working undercover for Oliver. He asked her every single question he could think of, from the most mundane detail of how he took his coffee to describing the night he declared war on the Triad.

When she was finished, Chase smiled at her encouragingly. "You did very well, Agent Smoak. With your testimony and Agent Diggle's, we're going to see to it that this guy rots in jail."

Her stomach twisted uncomfortably.

"What if the defense asks me about my...physical relationship...with him?" she asked as she fidgeted in her seat. "What do I say? Do I lie?"

"No," Chase said immediately. "If you lie on the stand, you will be charged with lying under oath, and lying under oath in a case this big carries a jail sentence."

"It would be a shame if you were to go through all of this only to go back to jail," Waller said tartly.

Felicity stiffened as she turned a hateful glare toward the FBI director. But instead of saying anything, she just nodded.

"Speaking of which," Chase continued. He leaned down underneath the table to pull out some papers from his briefcase. "I've formally written up the contract of the deal you made with Director Waller before you took on the mission. This states that once you have truthfully testified in Oliver Queen's criminal trial and once he is behind bars, you will be released from federal custody and your record will be wiped clean. We can also make provisions to take you into the WitSec program. It's a fresh start."

She looked down at the paper Chase had placed in front of her, and she could feel her heart pounding in her ears.

This was it. This was her freedom.

It was the only thing she'd thought about for years. She'd dreamed so long of getting out from under the FBI's thumb and starting over somewhere where no one knew who she was.

But then she thought about the cost of her freedom. And that future, that fresh start didn't look nearly as appealing knowing that she had to send Oliver to jail to get it.

"This is what you wanted," Waller reminded her. "It's right within your grasp. Just one more day of working for the FBI, and you can put it all behind you."

She swallowed hard and glanced up at John. He nodded encouragingly at her.

With shaking hands, she reached up and took the pen Chase held out in his hand. She scrawled her signature across the bottom line, and it felt like she was sealing her fate.

Chase nodded satisfactorily and took the pen and paper back from her. "Thank you, Agent Smoak. If you have any questions between now and Monday, don't hesitate to ask."

She cleared her throat. "I have one now. Just how much is riding on my testimony? I mean, Agent Diggle was undercover way longer than I was. He knows more than I do."

"Agent Diggle's testimony can tell us what he did, but only _you_ can tell us what he was thinking," Chase answered. "First degree murder is premeditated, and we need to prove that he thought through every single one of his actions. You're the only one who can provide us insight into his mind. You were the one closest to him. This entire case, his conviction rides on you."

Panic suddenly overwhelmed her, and Chase tried to give her a reassuring smile. "No pressure, Agent Smoak. But considering what you've had to live through in the past six months, sitting on the stand and telling the truth should be a piece of cake, right?"

Right. Piece of cake.

Waller and Chase left the room soon after, leaving John and Felicity to sit alone at the table. Neither of them said a word for a long time as Felicity tried to remember what it was like to take full breaths into her lungs again.

"I don't know if I can do this," she whispered.

John sighed and leaned forward to press his face into his hands. "You don't really have a choice, do you?"

She closed her eyes. "Can't you talk to him?" she begged. "Can't you get him to take the immunity?"

He snorted. "Felicity, if _you_ can't get him to take it, what makes you think I can? We both betrayed him, remember. He's not likely to listen to either one of us. What about Moira or Thea? Have you reached out to them?"

"I tried. I believe Thea's exact words were, 'Go to hell, you heinous bitch.'"

John sighed again, then lifted his face from his hands. "I'm sorry, Felicity."

Tears sprang to her eyes and she swiped them away quickly. "Is that it? Usually I can count on some patented John Diggle wisdom to cheer me up, and I could really use some of it right now."

He shook his head. "The only wisdom I have is this: I've lived my entire life doing what I thought was right. Was it difficult determining what 'right' was in any given instance? Of course it was. But sticking to my own moral code made it so that I could sleep at night. And I don't have any regrets.

"So that's all I can tell you. You need to do what you think is right, Felicity. You need to do what you have to, to make sure you can live with yourself. And you're the only one who knows what right looks like."

She gave him a tepid smile and he clapped his massive hand over her shoulder in return. It was good to know that at the end of all of this, she still had him on her side.

Felicity returned to her apartment later that evening. She took one glance around the place and sighed. For six long months, she wanted nothing more than to be able to return here, to know she was safe among her own possessions. To know that there was some tiny corner of this world that belonged to her and only her.

Ever since she returned, she hadn't been able to look at it the same way. It no longer felt like home to her. And looking at her bed only depressed her when she thought back to how long ago it had been since she'd gotten a decent night's sleep.

With a heavy body and a heavier heart, she threw herself down onto her couch and let out a long sigh. She thought back to John's advice: to do what she thought was right. What she thought and nobody else.

In a purely black and white sense, the right thing to do would have been to go up on that witness stand Monday and tell the truth. Tell the whole world that Oliver was the captain of the Bratva so they could send him to jail. The law and the justice system existed for a reason, and it was to make sure that people atoned for their crimes.

But the black and white didn't take into account what she knew deep in her bones about Oliver. Prison was for people who didn't _want_ to atone for their crimes. Prison was for people who were irredeemable.

Oliver was still very much redeemable, and she felt like she was the only one who could see it.

Felicity's eyes suddenly went wide at that realization. She was the only one who could see it.

The only one. She was the _only one_.

It was like that was the final puzzle piece, and all of the rest of it finally fell into place perfectly in her brain. She knew what she had to do now. She knew the only way she could save Oliver.

In a rush, she ran to her office to grab her laptop, then made a beeline for her kitchen to set up the coffeemaker. If she was going to pull this off, she was going to need to work through the long weekend.

* * *

After hardly sleeping a wink all weekend, Monday morning rolled around far too soon. Felicity went about her normal morning routine in a tangled mess of nerves. Just because she knew what she had to do now didn't make it any easier.

She spent a meticulous amount of time getting ready. She fussed with her conservative navy dress until it fell just right. She straightened every strand of blonde hair on her head until she knew it wouldn't move out of place. Her makeup was perfect, and the carefully applied concealer hid all traces of redness around her eyes.

She was ready. She could do this.

Once all the preparations were complete, she grabbed her bag and keys. Then she took one last look around at her apartment before walking out, shutting the door firmly behind her.

John was waiting for her outside the courthouse when she arrived.

"Are you ready?" he asked. They walked into the building together as he pressed a warm, flat hand between her shoulderblades.

Her heart pounded in her ribcage. "As ready as I'll ever be," she murmured under her breath.

They arrived before Oliver did, but Chase was already at the prosecution table with his other AUSAs, meticulously poring over the piles of paperwork stacked in front of him. John and Felicity both took the seat in the front row right behind the prosecution, and when Chase looked up, he caught Felicity's glance and made his way toward them.

"How are you feeling, Agent Smoak?" he smiled.

Her fingers clenched into fists in her lap. "Jittery," she answered.

"Well like I said, there's no need to be nervous about telling the truth."

She swallowed hard and nodded.

A few minutes later, Oliver was escorted into the courtroom, flanked by two correctional officers. Felicity's pulse quickened and her breath left her completely.

It had been nearly a month since she'd seen him in that disastrous meeting at the prison when she first offered him the immunity. Back then he looked gaunt and pale in the stark jail lighting, but now he looked even worse. His eyes had deep bags underneath them, and his skin looked almost sunken from spending the past month in lock up. His hair had also grown out a little bit, making him look far more ragged than she'd ever seen him before.

But despite all of that, he was still one of the most beautiful sights her eyes had ever beheld.

The judge entered the courtroom not long afterward, and he made no fuss about calling the proceedings to order. Once everyone had settled, Chase stood up from his seat and announced in a clear voice, "The prosecution calls Agent Felicity Smoak to the stand."

Her heartbeat echoed in her ears at the sound of her name. This was it.

John reached over beside her and squeezed one of her tightened fists. She returned his reassuring gesture with a short nod.

It was probably one of the last times she'd ever see him again.

Her trembling knees carried her forward, and she could feel every eye in that courtroom trained on her. She tried to keep her spine as stiff as possible, but it was difficult knowing what she was about to do.

Once she took her seat on the witness stand, the bailiff approached and held out a bible. "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?"

Her mouth had gone dry, but she swallowed anyway.

"I do."

The bailiff retreated and Chase stepped up, sending her another reassuring smile. "Please state your name and occupation for the record."

"My name is Felicity Megan Smoak," she said into the microphone. "I am an agent with the FBI."

"And how long have you been an agent?"

"Six months. Before that, I worked in operational technology with the bureau for three years."

"Very well. So how do you know the defendant?"

She glanced over at Oliver sitting next to his attorney. His face was carefully blank, but she knew it was just a farce. His expression was smooth, but his eyes were burning with hatred, and it made her flinch.

"Six months ago, I was assigned by FBI Field Director Amanda Waller to go undercover to work as his executive assistant at Queen Consolidated."

"Why?"

"The FBI suspected that Mr. Queen was a high-ranking member of the Solntsevskaya Bratva here in the United States."

"And, for the court record, can you tell us what that is?"

"The Bratva is a Russian organized crime unit with branches all over the world. They deal mostly in illegal drugs and arms, but have also been known to set up illegal gambling rackets and prostitution rings."

"And the FBI suspected that Mr. Queen was a member of this organized crime organization?"

"Yes. That's why they sent me undercover. To find any evidence linking him to the Bratva."

"And did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Did you find any evidence linking Mr. Queen to the Bratva?"

Felicity couldn't help herself. She tore her glance away from Chase to stare at the man behind him. Oliver was still watching her with wary eyes, but underneath all the impossible walls, she could still see him. She could see the way he looked at her the minute Sebastian Blood fell and she rushed into his arms. She could see the love he had for his sister and mother, the immense grief he felt when Sin died.

She could still see it all inside of him.

She took comfort in what she saw as she sucked in a deep breath.

"No."

A sharp pause took up the room at her single-word answer.

Chase blinked in confusion for a few seconds. "I'm sorry. Can you please repeat that?"

"No, I did not find any evidence linking Mr. Queen to the Bratva."

Upon repeating herself, the entire courtroom erupted into murmurs. Behind Chase's wide-eyed shock, she could see Waller's deep scowl and John's tiny smile.

But the only face that mattered to her in that moment was Oliver's.

The fire slowly seeped out of his eyes. Instead, the anger was replaced by disbelief.

Disbelief and...wonder?

"Agent Smoak," Chase barked. He was no longer smiling. "You understand that lying under oath in a criminal proceeding is a federal crime, punishable by two years in prison?"

"Yes," she answered. "But I'm not lying."

He rushed to the prosecution table and grabbed a packet of papers lying at the top of one of the stacks. "Then why does your testimony now completely contradict your earlier testimony in Mr. Queen's grand jury proceedings?"

"Objection!" McKenna called. "Your honor, grand jury records are supposed to be _sealed_. He can't use Agent Smoak's grand jury testimony as evidence in this trial."

"Sustained," the judge called. "Mr. Chase, you know better."

The man turned bright red as he faced the judge. "Your honor, this woman is _lying_! She is lying on the stand, she is perjuring herself, and the grand jury testimony proves it!"

"That may be the case, but she is not the one on trial at the moment. So either you continue your line of questioning or you wait to arrest her."

The people in the courtroom didn't even bother hiding their murmurs anymore. The entire room exploded with chatter, and the judge had to bang his gavel repeatedly for almost a whole minute to get everyone to quiet down.

"So this is it?" Chase spat, glaring at Felicity. "This is really going to be your testimony?"

All the moisture that left her mouth had pooled into the palms of her hands, but they were clenched tightly in her lap. There was no turning back now.

"Yes," she answered. "Oliver Queen is not a member of the Bratva. He is innocent. This trial is a waste of time."

Chase's scowl deepened. "Very well. No further questions."

Felicity stood up and walked out of the witness stand, navigating her way between the prosecution and defense tables. She could feel Oliver's laser eyes on her skin, but she didn't look back.

She strode all the way to the very back of the courtroom, where Waller was waiting for her outside the doors. "Well, you can kiss that freedom goodbye. You're going back to that jail cell I plucked you out of five years ago."

But Felicity just smiled. Even though she was going back to prison, it was the first time in five years that she felt free.


	25. Chapter 25

**Final phase**

"No."

The minute the word had left her lips, Oliver felt his world turn upside down once more.

The stunned prosecutor demanded that she repeat herself, and she did.

"No, I did not find any evidence linking Mr. Queen to the Bratva."

He felt the anger melt inside him as he stared at the woman sitting on the stand in complete shock.

She was lying under oath. She was lying on the stand.

For him?

The commotion in the courtroom reached such a fever pitch that the judge had to bang his gavel for close to five minutes to get everyone to quiet down, but Oliver paid no attention to it. He just continued to stare at the woman on the stand, trying desperately to catch her gaze.

And for a split second, she granted it. Their eyes connected, and he could see a glimmer of determination in her clear blue eyes. It was the same determination she held when she promised him she wouldn't let the Bratva turn him into a monster.

But then she broke off their exchange and turned her attention back to the apoplectic prosecutor in front of her, her jaw set at a hard angle.

Oliver turned to McKenna, whose face was remarkably impassive. "What is going on? What the hell is she doing?" he hissed.

But his lawyer didn't answer him. Instead she jumped to her feet and shouted, "Objection! Your honor, grand jury records are supposed to be _sealed_. He can't use Agent Smoak's grand jury testimony as evidence in this trial."

His jaw snapped shut as his attorney and the prosecutor battled it out for a minute, but he kept his stunned gaze on the woman sitting at the witness stand.

With her refusing to tell the truth, her testimony didn't last very long. The prosecutor shot her one last disgusted glance before announcing he had no further questions. Then she stood from the little chair and made her way out of the tiny box and down the little aisle dividing the prosecution and the defense.

Oliver watched her sure steps as she strode out of the courtroom and toward the entrance in the back where a stern woman with a hard glare was waiting to escort her out.

"Your honor, I must request a recess," the prosecutor hissed through his teeth.

The judge raised an eyebrow. "I'll do you one better, counselor. You can have the rest of the day to regroup. Court is adjourned until tomorrow morning." With one perfunctory bang of the gavel, he stood from his seat and the rest of the courtroom burst into a flurry of movement and noise. The team of prosecutors sitting at the table across the aisle from him hastily fled the courtroom as half the reporters in the room ran after them, their recorders and cameras out.

Oliver knew the other half was waiting for his attorney to make a statement. But he didn't let her leave yet. He grabbed her just above her elbow so she would face him.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded.

She fixed him with a steady gaze. "Oliver, I genuinely don't know."

"Bullshit!" he growled. "I know you've been in contact with her! Was that you? Did you tell her to lie on the stand?"

McKenna's eyebrows furrowed in irritation. "Here," she snapped as she stood up and grabbed his arm. "We need to have this conversation where no one can hear us."

Together, they pushed their way through the throng of bystanders and reporters into one of the quiet, soundproof rooms just outside the courtroom. There were no windows for anyone to peer through, and the only furnishing was the plain square table and the two chairs on either side.

Once the door was shut behind her, McKenna rounded on her client with a grim look on her face. "I did _not_ , in any way, ask, tell or encourage her to lie on the stand for you. I had no idea that she was going to do that."

Oliver raked a frustrated hand through his hair. "Then why did she do it?" he yelled. "What the hell is she thinking!"

He felt like he was flying apart at the seams. He was losing whatever precarious hold he had of his emotions, and everything he'd been feeling in the last two months was flowing out of him, destroying him from the inside.

This was supposed to be _his_ burden to bear. Nobody else's. He had allowed himself to be taken in by all of Anatoly's tricks. He allowed himself to be turned into nothing more than a puppet for the Bratva. He was the one who let the empire his father worked so hard to build fall by the wayside.

He was the one responsible for the destruction, and he had to be the one to pay for it. No one else.

"What did she tell you?" he demanded. "When you talked to her last? What did she say?"

McKenna pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest. "I really don't think I'm the one who should tell you."

"You're _my_ attorney!" he shouted. "Not hers! She doesn't have any client privilege with you!"

"That might be true, but there _is_ such a thing as being a decent person and respecting someone's confidence!" she shot back. "And since what she told me doesn't affect my representing you in court, I don't have any obligation to tell you!"

Oliver shot to his feet and started pacing the short length of the tiny room. McKenna wasn't going to tell him anything, but he needed to know what the hell was going through Felicity's head.

Truthfully, he hadn't been paying very close attention to the proceedings after Felicity's stunning "no" on the stand, but there was one sentence that kept repeating itself in his brain over and over again. And it was the reminder from that dickish prosecutor that lying under oath could land her in jail for two years.

She was going to _jail_. The thought of her in that orange jumpsuit, locked behind bars in a poorly lit cell, enduring what he had endured for the past few months felt...it felt wrong.

She didn't belong in a place like that.

"I have to talk to her," he announced. "I have to see her. Can you make that happen?"

McKenna didn't look at all surprised at his request, but her eyes did look a little resigned. "It's not going to be easy," she warned him. "They probably took her into custody the minute she stepped out of that courtroom."

His pulse pounded in his palms, but he pushed the anxiety away. "I don't care. I have to see her. I have to know what she was thinking."

His lawyer sighed. "Fine. I'll see what I can do."

* * *

In the end, McKenna had to pull every string and call in every favor she could think of. She had even made a wry joke that she didn't have anymore friends in the Justice Department because of all the threats she made, but Oliver hardly cared. All that mattered was the fact that his lawyer managed to swing him an hour-long visit in the very same room that she came to see him in the first time.

They would be alone. No correctional officers listening in on their conversation. No lawyers on the other side of the double glass. It would be just the two of them.

And he'd finally be able to get the truth.

Oliver was already sitting at the table when she was escorted in. It was the first time he'd seen her since the trial, and he didn't think it was possible for her to look so drastically different. Her blonde hair was limp and unkempt. There were gray bags under her eyes, clear for the whole world to see because she didn't even have her glasses to hide behind. And the loud orange of her jumpsuit washed her out terribly in the awful lighting of that tiny interrogation room.

In the aftermath of her betrayal, his thoughts revolved around her with an obsessive fury. He'd never been more angry at anyone or anything in his entire life, and all he wanted to do was tear apart everything within his gasp.

But once the anger melted away, he'd been swept up into an intense depression, and it ate him up from the inside.

He had loved her. In spite of everything that had happened, he knew that much to be true. He loved her as thoroughly as he was capable of, had been willing to lay his life down for her. Her betrayal felt like the worst kind of rejection — the kind of rejection he was certain he'd never recover from.

Seeing her here, sitting in front of him, in the flesh soothed his anger and the sadness by the slightest measure.

In the days since her false testimony, he'd imagined all the different things he would say once he could see her again. He imagined all the betrayed feelings he could finally give voice to, or even the berating he longed to fling at her since her foolhardy decision to lie in a criminal proceeding. He'd been writing his speech in his head since the minute he demanded to talk to her.

But in her presence, all of his planned words died on his tongue. The only thing he could do was stare into the eyes of the same woman who haunted him, day and night.

"Felicity," he whispered.

It had been so long since he'd allowed himself to say her name, but the minute it slipped from his tongue, he wanted to say it over and over again.

Her eyes slid shut for a tiny fraction of a second and Oliver wanted to reach forward and get her to open her eyes again. It had been too long since he got to see how blue they were.

When they came open again, she leaned forward, her expression one of pure determination. "Listen. I know we're supposed to have an hour, but I should tell you everything quickly, just in case they cut our time short."

His brows furrowed in confusion as she reached into the pocket of her jumpsuit and pulled something out. It was a tiny thumbdrive, hardly bigger than a quarter.

"This is all the information I could find on the Bratva servers implicating Anatoly in everything: from the Vertigo to your father's death. I grabbed everything I could and put it on here before I erased everything."

Oliver's eyes widened. "You...you what?"

"I grabbed this info and deleted everything else. All the accounts, all the plans, and most importantly, all the evidence implicating you in any other Bratva activity. This is everything you'll need to make sure Anatoly's conviction sticks once you take the immunity deal. It also ensures that you can't be charged with anything Bratva-related after this, and it seriously cripples the organization's ability to operate outside of Russia," she said firmly.

Irritation abruptly took over his expression. He was about to interrupt her to tell her he wasn't taking the damn immunity deal, but she didn't let him. She barrelled on, like she knew he had something to say and refused to let him say it.

"Roy's also agreed to hand over evidence implicating Anatoly. Once you've signed the deal, the two of you will be kept in a safe house until Anatoly's trial is complete. The minute he's behind bars, WitSec will create new identities for the two of you so you can stick together for as long as you want. You two could even go to Europe so you can be with Moira and Thea."

Oliver opened his mouth again, but she wasn't finished.

"And speaking of your mother and your sister, there's no need for either of them to be in WitSec since they're overseas, but I realized that they'll still need resources. So I put as much of your assets as I could in an overseas trust that only your mother and your sister can access. All that information is on this drive, too. This includes the Queen family cash on hand, stocks in Queen Consolidated and other investments. They're untouchable — not even the FBI can seize them."

His throat suddenly closed up, and all the words that he'd wanted to say didn't seem quite as important anymore. Not only was she trying to keep him out of jail, she'd also taken care of Roy and his mother and sister.

She'd taken care of everything.

"Felicity," he whispered again. "Why are you doing this? All of this? Lying on the stand for me? Making me take the immunity deal? Taking care of Roy and Thea and Mom? Why?"

Her eyes suddenly turned glassy and she had to look down for a second to compose herself.

A tear escaped her eye and she reached up quickly to wipe it away. "I should have told you sooner," she murmured. "I should have told you the truth — all of it — the minute you told me you loved me. So please, let me tell you the truth now."

And with that, she started from the beginning. She had told him the truth about Cooper and spending time in federal prison from the beginning. But she wasn't released on good behavior — no, she'd been blackmailed into government service for years by Amanda Waller, the FBI field director who assigned her to go undercover with the Bratva.

"I didn't want to do it," she whispered. "I told her that I'd rather go back to prison than go undercover. But she promised my freedom. She told me that if I took the mission and completed it, then I'd finally be free. My record would be wiped clean. I wouldn't go back to prison and I wouldn't have to work for the FBI. I could have a fresh start anywhere I wanted."

Oliver could hardly blame her for taking the deal. How many times had he wanted the same thing? How many times had he dreamed of running away from all his responsibilities and to start over, where no one knew who he was and what he'd done?

"But then why?" he asked. "Why did you lie on the stand? If all you wanted was to escape prison and get away from working for the FBI, why did you throw it all away?"

She smiled at him softly. "I thought it would be obvious by now," she said in a voice that wavered the tiniest bit. "I love you, Oliver."

And just like that, he felt his heart swell in his chest to nearly three times its regular size.

It was the first time she'd ever said those words to him. Every time he told her he loved her before, she looked away or she gave him a sad smile, or she shook her head. At the time, he thought she wasn't ready to say it back. After she revealed her real employer, he thought she never felt anything for him at all.

But now, here in this tiny interrogation room, stripped of all the pretenses and all the lies and schemes, she had finally said the words he'd been waiting to hear from her for so long.

"Felicity…" Her name came out in nothing more than a halted breath. He could hardly hold in all of the emotion inside of him.

"I knew you didn't trust me after I told you I was FBI," she said quietly. "There was no way you could. And besides that, you'd just found out that Anatoly was the one who killed your father all along, and not Chien Na Wei. Your life was falling apart around you and I…" Words failed her for a brief moment and she had to take a moment to compose herself. "I couldn't stand by and let you go to jail. I couldn't. I _wouldn't_.

"So I had to find a way to get you to trust me again. When Chase told me that the whole case against you hinged on my testimony, I realized I was the only one who could keep you safe. So I did what I had to do."

Oliver's chest and throat tightened and for a second he could hardly breathe.

She was telling the truth, and here was the proof. She was willing to go back to prison to keep him out of it. She was willing to sacrifice her freedom — the only thing she'd wanted in five long years — just so he could keep his.

His eyes welled up with tears. He swallowed around the lump lodged in his throat.

"I can't let you do this," he whispered. "Despite what you may say and what everyone else thinks, I still did terrible things. I sold Vertigo. I killed people. I nearly killed Chien Na Wei. I can't let you take the fall for my sins."

She shook her head. "Oliver, no. I'm not paying for your sins. I'm paying for _mine_. I lied to the man I love, and I caused him unbelievable pain. This is my punishment. This is my burden to bear. I lost your trust, and this was the only way to get it back."

"That doesn't take away the fact that I did all of those things!" he insisted. "All those families, all those people, all of Starling City, they deserve justice for my actions! For what I did to them!"

Felicity's jaw hardened and she glared at him. "Spending the rest of your life in jail isn't justice for anyone, Oliver! If you really want to pay for your sins, then find a way to make it right! Stay out of jail and make peace with this city. Do what you have to to minimize the effects of the Bratva's influence and make the city a better place! You're not any good to anyone in prison!"

The tears he'd been struggling to hold onto fell. "What makes you think I can even do any of that? I've spent the past five years looking for justice for my father and look what happened!"

She fixed him with her determined gaze. "You'll have justice for your father's murder once Anatoly is behind bars. Everyone will finally know who is responsible."

Then her gaze turned soft and she reached across the table to place her hand over his clenched fist. "As for how I know you can do it? Oliver, you've always been a far better man than you've ever given yourself credit for. It's time you see that."

The tenuous grasp he maintained on all of his objections to this ridiculous plan that Felicity had laid out for herself were slowly disappearing.

All but one.

"Felicity," he whispered in an anguished voice, "if you can't let me go to prison for this, what makes you think I can let _you_?"

She shook her head, but her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "You have to," she replied. "You have Roy and Thea and Moira. And you have to make things right. You don't belong in a place like this."

"But you do?" he challenged.

She shrugged. "I've been here before," she smiled sadly. "This isn't new for me."

No, he thought. That wasn't a good enough answer.

"What happens to you?" he demanded. "I go into WitSec and start over again, but what about you? How long do you have to stay here? What happens after you get out?"

She shrugged. "I'm told perjury carries a two-year sentence. I figure I'll get out on parole in a year and a half if I don't shank anyone while I'm in here."

Her attempt at a joke did nothing to lighten his mood, and she sighed when he didn't so much as chuckle.

"Oliver, don't worry about me," she murmured. "I can take care of myself. After I get out, I'll probably move as far away from here as possible. I'll change my identity. Dye my hair or something. Start over fresh, just like I always wanted."

But what about him? he wanted to scream. What about _them_? Would he never see her again? The thought alone was almost too much to bear.

A loud knock on the door interrupted them and Oliver's heart thumped painfully in his chest. Their time was over.

He couldn't let her go, though. There was still so much he hadn't said. Still so much he had to tell her.

Felicity got to her feet as the door swung open and the correctional officer stepped forward to grab her around her upper arm. "Let's go," he said roughly.

She followed him as he escorted her out, but she paused right in the doorway to turn to Oliver. Her colorless lips were turned up in a small smile, though her eyes were still sad.

"Oliver, I...I know that you never really loved _me_. I know that the person you fell in love with didn't really exist because she was based on a lie, but…" She bit her lip as she looked down. "But I hope one day I can become that girl. That girl who's worthy of your love."

And with one last, brave grin, she turned back toward the CO and followed him out the door.

Oliver sat there, completely stunned. A storm of emotions raged inside of him, and everything he felt ran the gamut from confusion, sadness and anger.

But the one that eventually rose to the surface was hope.

Felicity had given him hope. Hope that he could make things better. Hope that prison wasn't the end of his story.

Hope that one day, they would find each other again.

With a clear mind and sure movements, he stood from his seat and walked out the open door. McKenna was waiting for him on the other side, her expression wary.

"So?" she asked. "How did it go?"

He took in a deep breath. "Call whoever you need to call. I want to take the immunity deal."

She blinked in surprise. "Are you sure?"

He nodded. "I'll tell them everything they want to know about Anatoly. I want to make sure that bastard stays behind bars."

A small smile crept over McKenna's face. "Fair enough." And with that, she pulled her cellphone out of her purse and swiped across the screen.

Oliver followed her out of the building, but not before sending one last glance toward it. Felicity had said that one day she hoped to become the woman he fell in love with, but he came to a realization the minute the words left her mouth: she had always been the woman he fell in love with. She would always be the woman he loved.

And it was time for him to become the man she always believed he could be.

* * *

 **Epilogue**

 **Two years later**

It was one of the longest days Oliver had ever known, and all he wanted was to go back to his tiny apartment, make a beeline for his bed and fall into the sheets, never to re-emerge.

Unfortunately, he couldn't do it because he promised his best friend and roommate that he would come by the bar and help him close.

With a groan, Oliver hauled himself to his feet and walked to his locker, pulling his backpack and cap out.

"Bones getting achy, old man?" Specialist Ramirez smirked.

Oliver rolled his eyes. "I'm barely five years older than you, Rene."

"And yet I'm not the one who's groaning every time he gets to his feet."

Oliver grimaced. "Yeah, well I'd like to see you run the obstacle course all fucking day long and see if your joints don't ache a little at the end of the day."

He slipped his Army-issued cap onto his head and clapped the young soldier on his shoulder. "I'll see you tomorrow, Ramirez."

"If you can even get those achy joints of yours out of bed, sure," he quipped.

Oliver's companionable hand turned into a hard shove and he laughed as he walked out of the locker room.

It had been two years. Two years since he took the immunity deal. Two years since he and Roy started over. Two years since he put his past behind him and joined the Army in the hopes of making the difference he never made when he was in charge of the Bratva.

With another low groan, Oliver unlocked his beat up Camry and lowered himself into the driver's seat. A buzz in his pocket alerted him to a new message, and he pulled his phone out to find a text from Roy.

 _Get here ASAP_

He snorted. It was so typically Roy — straight to the point, but with no context whatsoever.

 _I'm on my way_ , he responded.

But first, he needed to get out of his uniform. He made a quick stop back at the apartment and, after sending a longing glance at his unmade bed, he quickly stripped and threw the rumpled camo on top of his overflowing laundry hamper. Then he dug out a pair of jeans and a gray henley out of the pile of dubiously clean clothes and shrugged them on.

Sometimes, all the changes in his life left him stunned when he sat still long enough to think about them. Two years ago, he rarely ever drove himself, and when he did, it was always in a top-of-the-line sportscar. Two years ago, his bed was always made. Two years ago, his laundry was always done and he never had to dig around for semi-clean clothes to wear to work.

But he wouldn't change any of it for the world.

He dressed quickly and arrived at Verdant in record time. Oliver found Roy behind the bar, pouring a draft of Blue Moon from the tap.

"Hey," he greeted as he walks up to his friend. "I'm here."

Roy glared at him. "Where the hell have you been?"

Oliver returned the glare with an incredulous look of his own. "I dunno, Roy. I guess I was at my other job, you know, _defending the country_."

Roy's reaction was to roll his eyes. "When your contract is up in a year and you get out, you won't be able to hold that over me anymore."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Anyway, I'm here. Where do you need me?"

Something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and Roy glanced over. Then he jerked his head over his shoulder. "That woman at the end just sat down. Go serve her."

Oliver grinned. Another thing that had changed in two years: Roy was the one more likely to give orders.

"Yes, sir."

"Shut up."

With a chuckle, Oliver snagged an apron from underneath the bar and tied it around his waist. Then he grabbed a cocktail napkin and put it in front of the new customer.

"Hi, welcome to Verdant," he greeted. "What can I get you?"

The woman was dressed in a light purple sweater and a pair of jeans. Her dark brown hair hung down around her face, which made a strong contrast to her pale skin and bright blue eyes.

Oliver did a doubletake when he saw those eyes.

There was something remarkably familiar about them…

Those same familiar eyes widened when they looked up and landed on him. And that was when it hit him.

He knew them because they made an appearance in his dreams every night. He knew them almost as well as he knew himself.

It was Felicity.

His heart turned over in his chest at the realization and his palms went clammy with sweat. She was here. Of all the places in the world she could have landed, she was here. She found him. Or maybe he found her.

"I'll, um…" she immediately looked down. "I'll have a vodka tonic?" Her voice went up at the end, like it was a question.

Oliver swallowed around the lump in his throat. "Coming right up."

He got to work making her drink with shaking hands, sneaking glances at her whenever he could. Despite the muted colors of her clothes and the darkness of her hair, he knew it was her. It _was_ Felicity.

The years had clearly changed her, just as they had changed him. She seemed quieter, more subdued. But there was a strength that radiated from her — like she'd been through hell and survived in spite of it all, and it showed.

He thought back to the last time he had seen her. Her sad smile when she said that she hoped one day she could become the woman he fell in love with had never left him. It burned itself into his memory and haunted him at the most inconvenient times.

A lot may have changed in two years, but one thing remained the same: he still loved her. He probably always would.

Oliver looked up from the drink in his hand as he reached for a lime to set on the edge of the glass. He looked around at the bar his roommate managed. He thought about his day job, working as a grunt in the U.S. Army. He thought about his mother and sister living comfortably in Europe, thanks to her. He thought about his life and its relative ease and lack of complication.

She had done all of that for him. She had given him a fresh start.

Maybe they could make another fresh start. Together.

Once the drink was made up, he poked two cocktail straws into the liquid and brought it to her. "Here you go," he said. "That'll be four dollars."

She pulled the cash out of her wallet and slid a five across the bar toward him. "Keep the change," she said.

He smiled at her. "Thanks."

She swallowed. "You're welcome," she answered nervously.

They weren't the same people anymore, clearly. But he wanted desperately to know who she was now.

"I've been working at this bar for a long time, and I thought I'd met just about every regular here," he said with a smile. "But I don't think we've met. And believe me, I would have remembered a face as beautiful as yours."

She quirked a questioning eyebrow at him, and his grin widened. He managed to get her nervousness to melt away, just a little.

"I'm Oliver Jonas," he told her, sticking his hand out to her. "I'm a soldier at Fort Carson down the road, and I'm a part-time bartender here. Nice to meet you."

A slow smile crept over her face and she took his hand. "Megan. Megan Cutler. I just moved into town. I'm working at the Tech Village downtown."

He held on to her hand way longer than a normal handshake would have lasted, because he found it difficulty to let her go. Like he was afraid if released contact with her, she might disappear again.

"It's really nice to meet you, Megan. How are you liking the town so far?"

She returned his smile with a grin of her own, and it made his heart thump in his chest.

"I wasn't sure how I'd like it when I moved here, but now I'm really glad I did."

He squeezed her hand that was still in his, hoping to communicate everything he felt in that one gesture.

"So am I, Megan. So am I."


End file.
